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ADDRKSS 



ON THE 



One Hundredth Anniversary 



OF 

ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE, 

ANNAPOLIS, 
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 26TH, 1889. 

BY 

PHILIP RANDALL VOORHEES, M. A. 



baltimore: 

■Printed by William K. Boyle & Son, 

no E. Baltimore Street. 






C^'i.'i- 



(^ r ? 7 7 



j&hess 



Ladies and Gentlemen^ Brothers Alumni, and Stu- 
dents OF Saint John's, — When the Committee, appointed 
to arrange a programme of commemorative ceremonies 
appropriate to the Centenary of St. John's College, re- 
quested me, through Principal Fell, to prepare and deliver 
loefore you, as ]3art of said programme for Alumni Day, a 
historical sketch of the College I felt at first no ordinary 
embarrassment. Nevertheless, impelled by a sense of 
duty, I promptly accepted the honor conferred. But, 
though painfully conscious then of my lack of literary 
qualifications, as my mind, dwelt more upon the subject 
and the occasion, and as I refreshed my recollections of 
St. John's antecedents by the perusal of the authorities at 
my command, my first embarrassment was increased ten- 
fold. I can, therefore, only pray you to bear patiently the 
detention which I shall impose upon you, by covering with 
the mantle of your charity my temerity in appearing 
before you in any other capacity than that of a hearer 
and learner. Were it not that the task assigned me is 



to do but little more than chronicle in one paper, in as 
orderly sequence as I may, events which have been more 
or less separately or segregatively reviewed before you at 
different times^, 1 could not have consented to stand here 
in the footsteps of those Alumni, and others distinguished 
in letters, who have in such numbers heretofore addressed 
audiences such as this, nor to break silence by any words 
of mine, while mindful of the stirring eloquence of those 
who have so often urged upon the people of the State, 
and their representatives in General Assembly, the merits 
of this venerable institution of learning and its claims to 
their fostering care. But it is eminently proper that a 
review of St. John's history should be read before its 
sons and others in celebration of the One Hundredth 
Anniversary of its natal collegiate day, or, more correctly 
speaking perhaps, its baptismal day, albeit such history 
is so well known by its alumni present. My only regret 
is, therefore, that some one more competent to do the full 
measure of justice to the subject should not have been 
selected for the historic work of the day. 

Bolingbroke says in his letters on the Study and Uses 
of History — attributing the remark to Dionysius of Hali- 
carnassus — that "^history is philosophy teaching by ex- 
amples." K this be so, then indeed Brothers Alumni 
the history of our Alma Mater, from her earliest past, 
is part and parcel of a grand philosophy, teaching all the 
virtues that go to make the patriot, the statesman, and 
the man, and we may not too warmly nor too jealously 
cherish the deeds and memories of her distinguished sons, 
as well as the times quorum magna ]oaTS fuerunt. It is 



needless to remind this audience that the names of many 
of St. John's sons are enrolled not alone in the annals of 
the State;, but in those of the Nation as well. They 
have given their Alma Mater a historic place in the 
temple of fame as enduring as the temple itself. As an 
alumnus hearing the revered name of Pinkney so felicit- 
ously said on Commencement Day in 1855^ when coup- 
ling the name of Key with the College, — ^^She has given 
the Star Spangled Banner to the nation, and made other 
offerings of which it is not necessary for me to speak." 
A College necrology has also, fortunately, been preserved, 
which perpetuates, in the archives of the Alumni, the 
memory of the virtues of deceased brethren. This necrol- 
ogy, first suggested, and its preparation personally begun, 
by a former Principal, Dr. Humphreys, has been extended 
and continued, you need not be reminded how faithfully, 
by the facile pen of Mr. John Gr. Proud, of the Class of '34, 
whose name, alas, now adorns that roll of the dead, upon 
which his labors of love and painstaking research had 
stamped the seal of truth. May the Alumni ever cherish 
the memory of this brother, who by tongue and pen, 
both in forcible prose and graceful verse, has expressed 
so much devotion to St. John's and her sons. 

Though St. John's first opened its doors on the 11th 
day of November, 1789, under the name it now bears, 
the history of the attempts which finally eventuated in 
its establishment begins at a much earlier date. 

A brief sketch here of the origin of the city where St. 
John's is located may not be out of place, before proceed- 
ing to the history of the College itself. 



When, in the Province of Maryland, under the Pro- 
j)rietary Government of Ceciliiis Calvert, the second Lord 
Baltimore, a colony had already become settled at St. 
Mary's, then the capital of the Province, though the red 
Indian still hunted on the shores of the Severn, and the 
^^Old Poplar Tree of the Old College Green" under which 
we are now assembled, then stood the pride of the '^forest 
primeval," a small band of Puritans, in 1649, driven by 
the rigid execution against them of the laws then exist- 
ing in the Province of Virginia, ^ ^removed themselves," 
their ^ ^families and estates into the Province of Mary- 
land, being thereto invited by Capt. William Stone, then 
Governor for Lord Baltimore, with the promise of liberty 
in religion and privileges of English subjects. " Captain 
Stone's appointment as Governor, it is said, depended 
upon his bringing five hundred immigrants into the 
Province, hence his invitation to these Puritans. This 
company of about one hundred immigrants first settled 
on Greenberry's Point, then known as Town Neck, which 
with the opj)osite point, now known as Horn's Point, or 
Horn Point, forms the entrance or mouth of the Severn 
Kiver. But, only eight individuals patenting the Neck, 
which consisted of two hundred and fifty acres, the settle- 
ment spread over more territory and occupied both banks 
of the Severn, the entire settlement being named ^Trovi- 
dence." In 1650 this settlement sent two burgesses to 
the General Assembly at St. Mary's, one of the two being 
elected speaker of the lower House. This Assembly 
passed an Act erecting Providence into a county, giving 
it the name of ^^Anne Arundel" — the maiden name of 
Lady Baltimore. 



The Puritan settlers having taken a modified oath — 
relinquishing no rights as English subjects — professedly 
acquiesced in Lord Baltimore's Proprietary Government 
under Governor Stone, thereby securing only warrants 
of survey, not land patents, except in a few instances, 
to secure which patents would have required the oath 
of allegiance to the Lord Proprietor. In July of 1650 
Governor Stone visited the settlers, and commissioned 
Mr. Edward Lloyd to be Commander of Anne Arundel 
County. 

This Mr. Lloyd, though he returned to England, where 
he died in London in 1695, left a son in the Province, in 
possession of an estate on the Eastern shore. This son 
is the ancestor of the Lloyd family whose representatives, 
in successive generations, have given distinguished service 
to the State, notably in its councils and thrice in its 
gubernatorial chair. In 1651, Mr. Lloyd, empowered by 
the Governor, granted a warrant to Thomas Todd for 
land covering the greater part of what is now Annapolis, 
Lord Baltimore's rent-roll, showing that on the 8th of 
July, 1651, one hundred acres were surveyed for said 
Todd. In the following November a parcel of one hun- 
dred acres, in the possession of Philip Hammond, was 
surveyed for Kichard Acton, and called ^^ Acton." This 
land, from its name, will be recognized by many in my 
audience as forming part of Annapolis. 

But before the Puritans were firmly here settled, stir- 
ring events happened between 1653 and 1657. In 1654, 
Cromwell was proclaimed in the province by Governor 
Stone, who resigned his office, submitting his authority 



8 



to the Government of the Protector. But, upbraided by 
Lord Baltimore, he engaged in the '^ ^battle of the Severn/' 
on Sunday/ March, 25, 1655, leading Lord Baltimore's 
forces from St, Mary's against the Puritans of the Severn 
under Captain Fuller, in which battle the latter were 
victorious, losing but six killed, while Governor Stone's 
forces had twenty killed and thirty wounded, the Gov- 
ernor himself being among the latter. The scene of the 
battle, supposed to have been on Horn Point, was long 
called the ^'Papists' Pound," and the ^^men of Severn" 
governed themselves thereafter until 1657, when settle- 
ment was effected, through intermediaries and Lord Bal- 
timore, in England. During these difficulties in 1654, 
the name of Anne Arundel County had been dropped, 
the Puritans again calling it Providence, but in 1657, by 
an order of Council, Providence County was re-named 
^^Anne Arundel," the ^'men of Severn" having virtually 
ruled the whole province for nearly eight years. 

Of this ^^war/' the Kev. Ethan Allen in his ^^Histori- 
cal Notices of St. Ann's Parish in Anne Arundel County," 
published in 1857, from which the facts herein recited, 
bearing upon the origin of Annapolis, are mainly gleaned, 
remarks: '^If, as alleged, the Lord Protector had con- 
firmed the reducement of Maryland from under Lord Bal- 
timore by the Commissioners, then this was a war against 
him ; and the St. Mary's government was a rebellion 
against the government established. If, however, the 
St. Marians could conquer, their right to govern would 
be as good at least as was Cromwell's by which he held 
the government of England." 



9 



In 1662, ^^Todd's Kange" was surveyed, on the south 
side of the Severn, and on the 16th of September, 1670, 
^ ^Todd's Harbor," was surveyed. This is said to be the 
site of Annapolis, which, in 1683, under the name of the 
^^Town at Proctor's,'* was made a Port of Entry. 

In 1689 Proprietary Government ceased in Maryland, 
and the Colonial Governor, Sir Lyonel Copley, assumed 
office April 9, 1692. Dying the next year, he was suc- 
ceeded by Governor Francis Nicholson, and a General 
Assembly met at St. Mary's on the 21st of September, 
1694. This Assembly passed an Act making the ^^town 
land at Severn in Anne Arundel County, where the town 
was formerly" (doubtless the place called in 1683 the 
Town at Proctor's) a town port and place of trade under 
the name of ^*Anne Arundel Town," and ^^Major Ham- 
mond, Major Edward Dorsey, Mr. John Bennett, Mr. 
John Dorsey, Mr. Andrew Norwood, Mr. Philip Howard, 
Mr. James Saunders and the Hon. Nicholas Greenberry, 
Esq., a member of the Council, were appointed to pur- 
chase and lay out one hundred acres of land in lots and 
streets, and with open places to be left on which to erect a 
church, market-house, and other public buildings. " The 
same Assembly passed an Act for the erection of a Court 
House, and the seat of government was permanently re- 
moved from St. Mary's to Anne Arundel Town, whose 
name was changed to Annapolis, in honor of Queen Anne 
as is recited in its charter subsequently received. The 
Court House, also used as a State House, was completed 
in 1697, but destroyed by fire in 1704. Another building 
was erected on its site, but torn down in 1769 to give 
place to the present edifice, supposed to have been designed 
' 2 



10 



by a pupil of Sir Christoplier Wren, the corner stone of 
which was laid in 1772 by Governor Eden, the last of the 
Colonial Governors. Historic Annapolis received its 
charter in 1708 from the Hon. John Seymoiirj Colonial 
Governor, and thus became a city with due corporate 
powers and privileges. 

Prior, however, to the removal of the seat of Govern- 
ment from St. Mary's, the first effort was made, by the 
Legislature in 1671, to establish a college in the province 
of Maryland, from which, slowly, through many further 
attempts, St. John's was evolved. But the two Houses 
of the Legislature disagreed upon certain amendments 
passed by the upper House, and the bill failed to be en- 
acted. Next, in 1694, Governor Nicholson, the new Gov- 
ernor, proposed in a message to the Legislature ^Hhat a 
way be found for the building of a Free School for the 
Province," and offered to give money for its maintenance. 
The Governor's proposition was approved by the General 
Assembly, which offered subscriptions of tobacco, and 
suggested that two Free Schools be established, one at 
Oxford on the Eastern shore of the State, and the other 
at Severn on the Western shore. * The Kev. Ethan Allen, 
in his Notes before mentioned, thus refers to these offers: 
^^The Governor proposed to give £50 for the building of 
the school house and £25 per annum to the master. Sir 
Thomas Lawrence, Secretary, gave 5000 lbs. towards the 
building, and 2000 lbs. tobacco per annum to the master. 
The House contributed 45,000 lbs. tobacco towards the 

*These facts as to early efforts to found a College in Maryland are recited in a torief 
historical sketch attached to a printed catalogue of St. John's, published in 1874, re- 
ferring to a paper in the Educational Bureau in Washington. 



11 



building; and of the members of the Council, Cols. 
Jowles, Kobotham, Greenberry and Brooks, 2000 lbs. 
each; Hutchinson and Frisby 1000 lbs. each, Thomas 
Brooke, Esq., £5 sterling towards the master's support 
and Edmund Kandolph £10 sterling." No practical 
measures, however, immediately flowed from these pro- 
ceedings. But soon after, in 1696, under the reign of 
William the Third, the Colonial Legislature passed a 
^Tetitionary Act" praying that Sovereign for the estab- 
lishment of a Free School or schools in Anne Arundel 
Town upon the Severn Kiver, with corporate powers and 
privileges, and for the establishment of a similar Free 
School in every county of the Province. The latter part 
of this proposed measure seems, however, not to have 
been prosecuted further until 1723, when an Act was 
passed for the erection of ^^one school in each county, as 
near the centre thereof as might be and as should be most 
-convenient for the boarding of children. " The petition- 
ary Act, above mentioned, also prayed that the school or 
schools to be established tliereunder in Anne Arundel 
Town should be devoted to the education of the youth of 
the Province in good letters and manners, including 
Latin, Greek and writing, under the Koyal patronage, 
with the Archbishop of Canterbury as the Chancellor; 
and that, to perpetuate the memory of the Sovereign, the 
first school there established should be called King Wil- 
liam's School; to be managed by trustees, to be appointed 
by the King, and by others, named in the Act, among the 
names mentioned being found those of the Governor, 
Francis Nicholson, Esq. ; the Hon. Sir Thomas Lawrence, 
Bart.; Col. George Kobotham; Col. John Addison, of the 



12 



Provincial Council^ and the Kev. Peregrine Coney. 
Though this petitionary Act was not declared in force 
until the time of Queen Anne in 1704, yet its '^Kectors, 
Visitors and Governors/' apparently in anticipation of 
the royal approval, opened '^King William's School" at 
Annapolis, then hut recently known as Anne Arundel 
Town, either in 1*701 or 1704 — the exact date does not 
appear certain. Governor Nicholson gave to the school 
a lot, with a house thereon, and the Legislature appro- 
priated money to huild the school house, which was com- 
pleted ahout the time of, or shortly before, the opening 
of the school. The school house, built of brick and stone, 
was located on the south side of the State House, within 
the present limits of its grounds, about where the De 
Kalb monument now stands, and about opposite the 
Eastern end of the street still called School street. 

From this beginning, at the dawn of the eighteenth 
century, King William's School appears to have flourished 
for about eighty-five years, passing successfully through 
the perturbations of the Kevolutionary War, and edu- 
cating for the State and Nation sons distinguished in 
the early history of the country^ /mong its pupils Wil- 
liam Pinkney, whose fame, too broad to be appropriated 
by any one State, is a heritage unto the Nation. This 
school, as we shall shortly see, was finally merged in St. 
John's College, delivering over to it its head master, as 
a professor, and students, funds and other property. 

In the meantime, in 1732, as appears by the historical 
sketch above mentioned, ^ Proposals for founding a Col- 
lege at Annapolis" were read in the upper House of As- 
sembly and recommended to the consideration of the 



13 



lower House, but no legislative effect was given to these 
proposals. In 1763 this project was revived. A com- 
mittee presented a report recommending ^^that the house 
in the city of Annapolis which was intended for the Gov- 
ernor of this Province, be completely finished and used 
for the College proposed to be established. " The measure 
was passed by the lower House, providing for the neces- 
sary expenses and annual pay of the Faculty, to consist 
of seven masters, to be provided with five servants, but 
it failed to pass the upper House. But the intent to 
establish a College at Annapolis seemed still to linger in 
the popular mind; for, in a letter dated Oct. 4, 1773, 
William Eddis, the Surveyor of Customs at the port of 
Annapolis, writes, to a friend in England, that the Leg- 
islature of the province had determined ^^to endow and 
form a College for the education of youth in every liberal 
and useful branch of science'' which, '^as it will be con- 
ducted under excellent regulations, will shortly preclude 
the necessity of crossing the Atlantic for the completion 
of a classical and polite education. " He also states that 
it had been determined to repair the damages to the 
^ ^melancholy and mouldering monument" formerly de- 
signed for the Governor's mansion, and to devote it ^^to 
the purposes of collegiate education, for which every cir- 
cumstance contributes to render it truly eligible. " As 
we shall presently see, this "^melancholy and mouldering 
monument," to use his own expression, was finally 
selected and devoted to the purposes of a "classical and 
polite education." But the Kevolutionary War soon 
followed this stormy period of the country's history, 
during which period, the patriotic citizens of Annapolis 



14 



caused the owner or consignees of a tea-ship, the brig 
^ 'Peggy Stewart," themselves to apply the torch and 
burn the ship as well as the cargo. The hopes and efforts 
of those who sought to give to the State the educational 
advantage of a college or university were thus doomed to 
further disappointment and delay, so that not until 1782 
did the Legislature of the State, the Colonial Govern- 
ment having been dethroned, again consider the matter. 
But when scarcely out of the throes of the Kevolution, 
and before the definitive treaty of peace of 1784 had been 
concluded, it was proposed to establish two colleges on 
the shores of the Chesapeake Bay, with a view to their 
subsequent union under ''one supreme legislative and 
visitorial jurisdiction, as distinct branches or members 
of the same State University," (Charter of Washington 
College, Act of April, 1782, Chap. 8.) In jDursuance of 
this policy Washington College was founded in 1782 on 
the Eastern, and, two years later, St. John's College on 
the Western shore. These facts, with the exception of 
the tea-burning incident, are gathered from the historical 
sketch and the laws above mentioned. 

By Chapter 37 of the Laws of 1784, the Legislature of 
the new and Sovereign State of Maryland, in consideration 
of the contributions voluntarily made and to be made by 
individual or corporate subscribers, for the purpose of 
founding St. John's College, granted to its original cor- 
porators, "The Visitors and Governors," to be thereafter 
elected by such subscribers, a charter, by the XlXth 
section of which the sum of one thousand seven hundred 
and fifty pounds current money was annually and /orei?er 
granted as a donation by the public to the use of said 



15 



College, to be applied by the Visitors and Governors to 
the payment of salaries to tbe Principal, Professors and 
Tutors of the said College. 

But, on the 25th of January, 1805, the Legislature 
passed an Act (Chap. 85) repealing the XlXth section 
of the charter and the annual appropriation, therein pro- 
vided for, was withheld from the College. The Act of 
repeal, however, was passed by but a small majority. It 
would be unprofitable to seek or to discuss here the rea- 
sons that prompted this action on the part of the people's 
representatives. The action itself has been fitly char- 
acterized, in no measured terms, time and again by elo- 
quent tongues, and it will be sufiicient to remark here 
that, while in the sixteenth year of its active usefulness, 
and when promising increased advantages for the future, 
this action so crippled the institution that it did not, for 
years as a college, recover from the blow, if indeed its 
whole developement thereafter was not, for all time, modi- 
fied. But in 1811 the State voted an annual donation of 
one thousand dollars, and in 1821 authorized the College 
to raise, by a lottery, a sum not exceeding eighty thous- 
and dollars, of which amount the sum of twenty thousand 
dollars was realized, and invested as a college fund. In 
1832, by joint resolution. No. 41, two thousand dollars 
was added by the State to the annual sum of one thous- 
and dollars theretofore voted, conditioned upon the Visi- 
tors and Governors agreeing to accept the same in full 
satisfaction of all claims against the State for the unpaid 
sums provided for in the charter. Despairing of better 
terms, and the money being greatly needed, the Visitors 
and Governors, under such circumstances of practical, if 



16 



not legalj duress, acceded to and executed a release. Sub- 
sequently, by Eesolution No. 4 of 1858, tlie Legislature 
authorized a suit to be brought to test the constitution- 
ality of the repeal of the XlXth section of the charter. 
Such a suit was accordingly brought, in Equity, the Grov- 
ernor appearing for the State as a defendant. The bill 
charged that the State by such repeal had violated the 
provisions of a solemn contract. The Court of Appeals, 
on a case stated from the Court below, so held (15 Md. 
Keports, 330). But the same Court also held later, when 
payment was sought to be obtained by proceedings for a 
mandamus to the accounting officers of the Treasury, that 
the Visitors and Governors '^having accepted the propo- 
sals of the Legislature and by their solemn and formal 
release having discharged and extinguished the claim 
made here, have deprived themselves of the power as 
well as right to assert and again maintain it." The 
Court, having reached this conclusion, expressed no 
opinion upon the point raised by the defense, that a 
mandamus, under the facts of the case, was not the proper 
remedy. (23 Md. Kep., 629). 

The legal proceedings rested here, although an appeal 
from this decision to the Supreme Court of the United 
States was advised by eminent authority, upon the ground 
that the Visitors and Grovernors had exceeded the author- 
ity conferred upon them, in executing such release, the 
case being one in which the act complained of involved 
the question of a violation of the constitution of the United 
States, Section X of Article I of which declares that ^^ No 
State shall pass any Law impairing the Obligation of Con- 
tracts." 



17 



But in 1866, the Visitors and Governors, ever faithful 
to the interests of the College, memorialized the Legisla- 
ture, urging, in the strongest terms, the hardship of the 
situation and their dislike to appeal to a jurisdiction out- 
side of the State in search of any relief which it was com- 
petent for the State itself by legislative action to grant. 
Whereupon the Legislature, mindful of the situation, 
voted to restore the amount of unpaid annuities which 
had, through fortuitous circumstances, accrued within 
the preceding five years — the war period — during which 
the College was closed. An additional appropriation of 
twelve thousand dollars was also voted, to he paid annu- 
ally, on and after June 1st, 1868, for the next ^ve years. 
(Act of 1866, Chap. 101). 

Of the Acts of 1872, Section 1 of Chapter 393, appro- 
priated, in addition ^^to the sum of three thousand dol- 
lars now annually paid, " the sum of twelve thousand dol- 
lars annually on and after the first day of June, 1873, for 
and during the term of six years. Section 2 granted ten 
thousand dollars per annum for the board, fuel, lights 
and washing of two students from each senatorial district 
to be given free tuition by the College. Section 3 gave 
in gross the sum of five thousand dollars for increasing 
and improving the college library, laboratory, philoso- 
phical apparatus and cabinet. 

Of the Acts of 1878, Section 1 of Chapter 315, in addi- 
tion to the permanent annuity of three thousand dollars, 
continued the appropriation of 1872, of twelve thousand 
dollars, then about to expire, for and during the term of 
two years on and after the first day of October, 1878. Sec- 
tion 2 repealed section 2 of Chapter 393 of the Acts of 1872, 



18 



and granted instead two hundred dollars per annum, 
beginning the first day of October, 1878, for every stu- 
dent provided for in said repealed section, until the num- 
ber of said students should be reduced to one for each 
senatorial district, when, and thereafter, it granted the 
sum of five thousand two hundred dollars per annum for 
the board, fuel, lights and washing of such total number 
of students, to be given free tuition by the college — under 
the conditions of good character, pecuniary inability, 
and other qualifications imposed. The statute-book, to 
the present, shows no further financial legislation in aid 
of the college, except the sums of seven thousand five hun- 
dred dollars appropriated by the Act of 1882, chapter 
459; and four thousand dollars by the Act of 1886, chap- 
ter 402; and two thousand two hundred and fifty-six dol- 
lars, amount of two years interest on the indebtedness of 
the College, appropriated by the Act of 1888, Chapter 408. 

This cursory sketch of the financial relations which 
have existed between the parent State and St. John's 
from its birth, while showing a certain liberality, also 
shows to what slight approach towards the real necessities 
of the case such assistance could only go. Such digres- 
sion from the orderly narration of events in the history of 
the College has been made, however, solely with a view of 
avoiding the interruption of such narration by the intro- 
duction, at intervals, of financial details which it seemed 
better to connect and mass in one statement. 

Keturning now to the year 1784 — the date when, as we 
have seen, the legal existence of St. John's, eo nomine^ 
began — we find many of Maryland's sons, distinguished 
in both the State and Nation, among the promoters in the 



19 



endeavor to found a great college of that name. Active 
among these promoters were Samuel ChasC;, William Paca, 
Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton, famous as 
signers of the Declaration of Independence, Daniel of St. 
Thomas Jenifer, John Eagar Howard, Eichard Ridgely, 
George Plater, Luther Martin, Jeremiah Townley Chase, 
Alexander Contee Hanson, the Eight Eeverend Thomas 
John Claggett, Eobert Bowie, the Eversfields, Benedict 
Calvert, Benjamin Stoddard, George Diggs, Gerard B. 
Causin, John Chapman, John Sterett, Daniel McMachen, 
Daniel Bowly, Eobert Gilmor, Otho H. Williams, George 
Lux, and others of like excellence and influence. 

Under these ausj)icious influences St. John's received 
its charter from the State of Maryland. The act of incor- 
poration, constituting this charter, (Chapter 37 of the 
Acts of 1784, consisting of the preamble and thirty-six 
sections) is entitled: 

^'An Act for founding a College on the western shore 
of this State and constituting the same, together with 
Washington College on the eastern shore, into one uni- 
versity, by the name of The University of Maryland." 

This charter in its preamble declares : ' ' Whereas insti- 
tutions for the liberal education of youth in the princi- 
ples of virtue, knowledge and useful literature, are of 
the highest benefit to society, in order to train wp and 
perpetuate a succession of able and honest men for dis- 
charging the various offices and duties of life, both civil 
and religious, with usefulness and reputation, and such 
institutions of learning have accordingl}^ been promoted 
and encouraged by the wisest and best regulated States: 
And whereas it appears to this general assembly that 



20 



many public spirited individuals, from an earnest desire 
to promote the founding a college or seminary of learn- 
ing on the western shore of this State, have subscribed 
and procured subscriptions to a considerable amount, and 
there is reason to believe that very large additions will 
be obtained to the same throughout the different counties 
of the said shore, if they were made capable in law to 
receive and apply the same towards founding and carry- 
ing on a college or general seminary of learning, with 
such statutory plan, and with such legislative assistance 
and direction, as the general assembly might think fit; 
and this general assembly highly approving those gener- 
ous exertions of individuals, are desirous to embrace the 
present favorable occasion of peace and prosperity for 
making lasting provision for the encouragement and ad- 
vancement of all useful knowledge and literature through 
every part of this State." 

By the second section immediately following the pre- 
amble, it is in part enacted: '^ That a college or general 
seminary of learning, by the name of Saint John's, be 
established on the said western shore, upon the following 
fundamental and inviolable principles, namely; first, the 
said college shall be founded and maintained for ever, upon 
a most liberal plan, for the benefit of youth of every reli- 
gious denomination, who shall be freely admitted to equal 
privileges and advantages of education, and to all the lite- 
rary honors of the college, according to their merit, with- 
out requiring or enforcing any religious or civil test, or 
urging their attendance upon any particular religious wor- 
ship or service, other than what they have been educated 
in, or have the consent and approbation of their parents 



21 



or guardians to attend; nor shall any preference be given 
in the choice of a principal, vice-principal, or other pro- 
fessor, master or tutor, in the said college, on account 
of his particular religious profession, having regard solely 
to his moral character and literary abilities, and other 
necessary qualifications to fill the place for which he shall 
be chosen/' 

By the third section. The Eight Keverend John Carroll 
(the first Catholic Archbishop of America) and the Kev- 
erend Doctors William Smith and Patrick Allison (emi- 
nent divines respectively of the Protestant Episcopal and 
Presbyterian Churches), Kichard Spring, John Steret, 
George Diggs, Esquires, ^^and such other persons as they 
or any two of them may appoint," were ^^ authorized to 
solicit and receive subscriptions and contributions for the 
said intended college and seminary of universal learning. ' ' 

It is needless to add that we are told that these eminent 
men, of all shades of faith, cordially assisted and harmo- 
niously engaged in the good work of securing funds for, 
and of assisting in, the founding of the intended seminary 
of universal learning, ^^upon a most liberal plan for the 
benefit of youth, of every religious denomination," which 
should require no religious test, nor '^attendance upon 
any particular religious worship or service." 

By the same third section it is provided that each sub- 
scriber, or class of subscribers, of one thousand dollars 
shall be entitled to elect ''one Visitor or Governor" of 
the College. 

By the fourth section it is enacted that when the Visi- 
tors and Governors were so elected, they should meet and 
take upon themselves their trust and should then be "one 



22 



community, corporation and body politic, to have contin- 
uance forever by the name of the Visitors and Governors 
of St. John's College in the State of Maryland; and by 
the same name shall have perpetual succession." 

The seventh section, in case Annapolis should be se- 
lected by the Visitors and Governors as the place for 
establishing the College, grants them a lot of four acres 
of ground in fee, whereon St. John's should be located. 
This lot contained the monumental ruin, mentioned in Mr. 
Eddis' letter, in 1773, which will be described further on. 

By the thirty-third section it is enacted that Washing- 
ton College and St. John's College ^^ shall be and they 
are hereby declared to be one University, by the name of 
the University of Maryland, whereof the Governor of the 
State for the time being shall be chancellor, and the prin- 
cipal of one of said colleges shall be vice-chancellor, either 
by seniority or election, according to such rule or by-law 
of the University as may afterwards be made in that case. ' ' 
This legalized union never reaching consummation, St. 
John's took its departure from King William's School, 
alone, for weal or woe, among the educational institutions 
of the young Kepublic. 

The preamble to the consolidation Act of 1785, chap- 
ter 39, informs us that, ^^The Kector, Governors, Trus- 
tees and Visitors of King William's School, in the city 
of Annapolis, have represented to the general assembly 
that they are desirous of appropriating the funds belong- 
ing to the said school to the benefit, support and mainte- 
nance of Saint John's College, in such manner as shall 
be consistent with, and better fulfil the intentions of the 
founders and benefactors of the said school, in advancing 



23 



the interests of piety and learning, and have prayed that 
a law may pass for the said purpose," wherefore the 
second section of the Act, immediately following the pre- 
amble, enacts that, the prayer he granted and that, upon 
the mutual agreement of the parties upon terms, ^^all 
the lands, chattels, and choses in action and property" 
belonging to the said school may be conveyed by deed to 
the Visitors and Governors of St. John's College. 

The third section enacts that if such conveyance be 
not effected, the property shall remain in, or revert to, 
the Rector, Governors, Trustees and Visitors of King 
William's School, who are, in said section, incorporated, 
with power to carry out the original purpose of the school, 
by the name of the Rector and Visitors of Annapolis 
School, and by no other name to be known. 

The subscriptions obtained for St. John's College under 
the above mentioned provisions of law, prior to 1786, 
from other sources than the State's Treasury, had thus 
amounted to the sum of eleven thousand pounds sterling, 
including two thousand pounds subscribed under the legal 
provisions already narrated, by King William's School. 
This sum entitled the Rector and Visitors of said school, 
by the terms of St. John's charter, to elect two Visitors 
and Governors, who were accordingly elected as members 
of the original Board, at a subscribers' meeting held in 
1784 — nine other members being elected, one by each 
subscriber, or class of subscribers, of one thousand pounds. 
The first meeting of this Board of Visitors and Governors 
elected by the subscribers was held February 28, 1786, 
and the following named members duly qualified on that 
day before one of the Judges of the General Court: Right 



24 



Eev. Thomas J. Claggett, D. D., Kev. William West, 
D. J)., Nicholas Carroll, Esq., John H. Stone, Esq., Wil- 
liam Beans, Esq., Kichard Eidgely, Esq., Samuel Chase, 
Esq., John Thomas, Esq., Thomas Stone, Esq., Alexan- 
der C. Hanson, Esq., LL. D., and Thomas Jennings, Esq., 
the last two elected by the Kector and Visitors of King 
William's School. On the first day of March, 1786, this 
Board of Visitors and Governors fixed upon Annapolis 
as a place proper for establishing the College — nine votes 
being cast in favor'of this location and but two in favor 
of Upper Marlborough — the only other place considered. 
At the same time, the consolidation of King William's 
School and St. John's College was carried into practical 
effect by the transfer of its property to, and merger of its 
newly named successor, the ''Annapolis School," in, the 
college. Subsequently, in 1789, ten members were elected 
to their Board by the votes of the Visitors and Governors, 
and the succession has been maintained by such elections 
of new members to the present time. The names of those 
elected, as above mentioned, to the Board of Trustees in 
1789 were — Gustavus Brown, M. D., John Allen Thomas, 
Charles Carroll of Carrollton, Jeremiah Townley Chase, 
Charles Wallace, James Brice, Richard Sprigg, Edward 
Gantt, Clement Hill, and Right Rev. John Carroll, D. D. 
Annapolis having been thus selected for the site of the 
college, by the terms of the seventh section of its charter, 
St. John's obtained the grant of ''all that four acres of 
land within the city of Annapolis, purchased for the use 
of the public and conveyed on the second day of October, 
seventeen hundred and forty-four, by Stephen Bordley, 
Esquire, to Thomas Bladen, Esquire, then Governor, to 



25 



liave and to hold the said four acres of land with the ap- 
pertenances to the said visitors and governors, for the 
only use, heneiit and hehoof of the college or seminary 
of universal learning forever." 

The charter likewise empowers the Visitors and Gov- 
ernors to acquire other property, hoth real aud personal, 
and to alienate all such acquisitions, saving and accept- 
ing, however, anything acquired by the original charter- 
grant. 

The ^^appertenances " belonging to this four acres of 
land consisted of the remains of a handsome mansion, 
projected by Governor Bladen about 1744, for the official 
residence of the Colonial Governors, which though com- 
menced under the supervision of a Scotch architect, who' 
came to the country especially to construct it, was never 
completed for the purposes originally intended, owing, we 
are told, to a quarrel between the Governor and the Legis- 
lature. Hence this building went almost to ruin, and 
remained uncompleted for years, receiving the popular 
name of ^^ Bladen's Folly" or ^'The Governor's Folly." 
This popular appellation was recorded in verse by a local 
poet, who, in the Annapolis Gazette of September 5, 
1771; — the old church on the site where now stands St. 
Anne's being sadly in need of repairs, — published some 
lines on the subject, headed as follows: ^^To the very 
worthy and respectable inhabitants of Annapolis, the 
humble petition of their old church sheweth. " 

The old church is made to speak in the first person and 
in the course of the ^^ petition " says: — 



26 



"Witli grief in yonder field, hard bye, 
A sister ruin I espy : — 
Old Bladen'' s 2) cilace^ once so famed, 
And now too well ' the folly ' named, 
Her roof all tottering to decay. 
Her walls a-mouldering all away. " 

It is needless to add that on the present ^^ College 
Green'' or campus stands the ^^Grovernor's Folly/' near 
whose walls, since crowned by '^McDowell Hall/' we are 
now assembled. 

On the 10th of March, 1786, it was resolved by the 
Visitors and Grovernors to repair and finish this old struc- 
ture and to add wings on the North and South sides and 
a building-committee was appointed consisting of Alexan- 
der Contee Hanson, Nicholas Carroll and Richard Ridgely, 
Esquires, to carry into effect such a plan. The building, 
however, was completed, without these additions, in its 
present form and style, and it is said that the marks in- 
dicating the lines of union between new and old work in 
making repairs and completing the walls, are still visible. 

On the 11th of August, 1789, at a meeting of the Visi- 
tors and Governors, ^ ^Bishop Carroll was unanimously 
elected President of the Board," and ^'Dr. John McDowell 
appeared and accepted the professorship of Mathematics, 
tendered him on the 14th of May preceding. " The Rev. 
Ralph Higginbottom, then Rector of St. Anne's Parish, 
^^was also elected professor of Languages" at this meet- 
ing. 

The college-building having been made habitable, the 
'^llth day of November, 1789, was selected for the occa- 
sion of opening the Institution, and the Rev. Dr. Smith 



27 



was requested to attend as Principal of tlie College, pro 
tempm^e, and to deliver a sermon. The dedication was 
performed with much solemnity, all the puhlic bodies, 
(state and municipal, and citizens and students), being 
in attendance, and forming a long procession from the 
State house to the College Hall." An address, on the 
^ ^Advantages of a classical education," was also delivered 
by the Rev. Ralph Higginbottom in addition to the ser- 
mon preached by the Rev. William Smith. On this oc- 
casion, Charles Carroll of Carrollton, appeared, qualified 
as a Visitor and Governor, and took- part in the proceed- 
ings of the day. 

With Dr. John McDowell, LL. D., as Professor of 
Mathematics, now presiding as Principal, and Rev. Ralph 
Higginbottom, Professor of Languages, the College 
started into life. Mr. Higginbottom brought with him 
many scholars from King William's and the Annapolis 
School, of which he was the last Head Master. 

On May 14th, 1790, Dr. McDowell was elected by the 
Board Principal of the College, efibrts to obtain a Prin- 
cipal from England having, up to that time, failed of re- 
sponse; and in the same year, a Professor of grammar, 
Patrick McGrath, was added to the faculty. On No- 
vember 10th of this year a convocation, composed of rep- 
resentatives from Washington and St. John's Colleges 
was held at Annapolis before the Grovernor of the State, 
as Chancellor ex officio of ^^The University of Maryland," 
as provided in section 23 of St. John's Charter, already 
quoted, the j)urpose in view being the union of both Col- 
leges under the title of said University. This union, it 
is needless to add, has never been consummated, though 



28 



in May, 1791, representatives from St. Jolm's appeared 
at another convocation at Annapolis, at which Washing- 
ton College was not represented. The Chancellor there- 
upon adjourned the convocation to "^'the second Wednes- 
day in November next/' and no more convocations appear 
to have been held. The causes which prevented the con- 
summation of this union it would not be profitable here 
to discuss. The spirit and temper of the times, influ- 
enced doubtless by the lack of facilities of travel, had in- 
augurated the plan of two Colleges, as a compromise 
between conflicting views and interests, and thus both 
energy and means were spent to less, instead of greater 
advantage. In 1792, Mr. Higginbottom was made Yice- 
Principal by the Board; and ^"^the sum of 275 lbs. was 
expended for the purchase in London of the requisite 
Philosophical apparatus," and by the succeeding year, 
three additional teachers had been added, making a corps 
of six professors including the Principal and Vice-Prin- 
cipal. 

In 1793, at its first Commencement, St. John's con- 
ferred the degree of B. A. upon three graduates, Charles 
Alexander, John Addison Carr and William Long, but 
the alumni, credited to this class, number in all sixteen, 
of which number one became Governor of the State; one, 
a Judge of the Court of Appeals; two. Associate Judges 
of a judicial district; one, the Clerk of the Executive 
Council; one, a Kegister of Wills; and one, a Visitor and 
Governor of the College. The Historical Society of Anne 
Arundel County is authority for the following, to say the 
least, remarkable summary of the earlier work of St. 
John's: 



29 



^^From its first Commencement, held in 1793, to that 
of 1806, a brief period of thirteen years, we find among 
the names of its graduates those of no less than four 
Governors of Maryland, one Governor of Liberia, seven 
members of the Executive Council, three United States 
Senators, five members of the U. S. House of Kepre- 
sentatives, four Judges of the Court of Appeals (General 
Court), eight Judges of other Cburts, one Attorney-Gen- 
eral of the U. S., one U. S. District Attorney, one 
Auditor of the U. S. Treasury, six State Senators and 
fifteen members of the House of Delegates; besides foreign 
consuls, officers of the Navy and Army, physicians and 
surgeons, distinguished lawyers, (including a chancellor 
of South Carolina,) college professors and others." 

Among this array of learning and worth it will not be 
invidious to mention the name of one of the class of 1802, 
David Hoffman, LL. D., author, historian and jurist, a 
citizen of Maryland, eminent in his own and a neighbor- 
ing State, as well as abroad, and upon whom degrees were 
conferred by the Universities at Oxford and Gottingen. 
Dr. Hoffman was both a patron and a Visitor and Gov- 
ernor of St. John's. 

Of the pupils of St. John's in its early days, the '^ ^Mary- 
land Collegian" of March, 1878, states: ^'We find from 
an examination of the old matriculating register that 
between the years 1789 and 1805, it shows not only repre- 
sentatives of every county of Maryland and the City of 
Baltimore, but also from the States of Pennsylvania, 
Delaware, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, 
Georgia and Louisiana. We find there representatives 
from no less than nine counties of the State of Virginia, 



30 



and the following well-known Virginia names: Washing- 
ton^ Custis, Dulanjj Alexander, Thompson, Clark, 
Herbert, Lomax, Taylor, Benson, Gibbon, Love, Black- 
burn, Bnrwell, Mercer, and others/' The same authority 
finds the names of two students from England; one from 
France; three from the West Indies; one from Portugal; 
and, '^omitting as many, quite as distinguished," the 
following Maryland names of Jennings, Dulany, Carroll, 
Stone, Pinkney, Lloyd, Chase, Ogle, Hanson, Thomas, 
Murray, Kidgely, Key, Dorsey, Snowden, Harwood, 
Stewart, Lee and Howard. 

The Custis above named among the Virginians refers 
to George Washington Parke Custis, the stepson and 
ward of Washington, who, it is said, took a great interest 
in St. John's, which he manifested by sending there his 
own ward as a pupil. The genial old gentleman, Mr. 
Custis, was at one time a member of the class of 1799, 
and survived long enough to be personally known to 
several of my brothers alumni present. 

Memorable among the distinguished names of gradu- 
ates during the period above named, stand the names of 
Francis Scott Key, B. A., and John Shaw, B. A., M. D. 
They early gave promise of their great talents and use- 
fulness. It is said that Mr. Higginbottom took great 
pride in exhibiting before visitors the accomplishments 
of these students and others, who, with them, formed 
the graduating class of 1796. Mr. Key's talents as a 
poet Avere also shared by his classmate, Sha^v. The poems 
of each have been jDreserved in book form. In 1810 a 
volume of Dr. Shaw's poems appeared, containing the 
following sonnet written some years previous and probably 



31 



the oldest preserved record, in song, of the old college tree 
of pre-historic growth, whose wide-spreading branches, 
still living, now wave over this audience : — 

"Thee, ancient tree, autumnal storms assail, 

Thy shatter' d branches spread the sound afar; 
Thy tall head bows before the rising gale, 

Thy pale leaf flits along the troubled air. 
Xo more thou boastest of thy vernal bloom. 

Thy withered foliage glads the eye no more; 
Yet still, thy presence in thy lonely gloom 

A secret pleasure to my soul restore. 
For round thy trunk my careless childhood stray'd, 

When fancy led me cheerful o'er the green. 
And many a frolic feat beneath thy shade, 

Far distant days and other suns have seen. 
Fond recollection kindles at the view. 
And acts each long departed scene anew." 

Dominie Higginhottom is said to have been a graduate 
of Trinity College, Dublin, and a complete master of the 
Latin and Greek languages. He was ordained a priest of 
the established church before emigrating to America. He 
resigned the Kectorship of St. Anne's parish, in 1804, but 
remained Vice-Principal of St. John's until his death in 
1813. Dr. McDowell, and the Faculty under him, thus 
gave to St. John's its grand history, until 1806. 

On May 12th of said year, the Visitors and Governors 
passed a resolution which recited that, '^Whereas, by 
virtue of an act of the Legislature of Maryland, at their 
last session, the donation from the State for St. John's 
College of seventeen hundred and fifty pounds per annum, 
will cease and determine on the first day of June next, 



32 



therefore, — Kesolved, that the Principal, Yice-Principaly 
Professors and Masters of said College he discontinued on 
the tenth day of August next. " The Board of Visitors 
and Governors, however, notwithstanding this necessary 
measure, made the hest provisions possible for continu- 
ing the college work. 

Though re-appointed by the Visitors and Governors, 
this sudden shock to the brilliant usefulness of the col- 
lege so depressed the health and spirits of Dr. McDowell 
that he declined re-appointment. Mr. Higginbottom, 
however, notwithstanding said Kesolution, appears to 
have been retained, and Dr. McDowell was elected a mem- 
ber of the Board of Visitors and Governors. Subsequently 
he accepted the chair of Provost of the University of Penn- 
sylvania, resigning his office as Visitor and Governor of 
St. John's. In 1815 he returned to the State, and was 
again offered the position of Principal of the College. 
This he declined, and was again made a Visitor and Gov- 
ernor. Dr. McDowell is said to have been ^' a man of fine 
presence, and of a pleasing and winning address, combin- 
ing in a remarkable degree great firmness and dignity of 
character with an almost feminine gentleness. He was a 
thorough scholar, and a Christian gentleman, greatly be- 
loved by all who knew him. ' ' He died in February, 1821. 

Returning to the work of the College, begun and con- 
tinued under the regime of its succeeding Principals, 
St. John's history exhibits heroic efforts on the part of its 
officers and friends to maintain its original high standard 
of efficiency; and the struggle, though a hard one, has 
been carried on to success, — very great success, certainly, 
if the quality, not mere numbers, of the graduates be 



33 



taken as tlie standard of comparison ; as will appear from 
the facts yet to be narrated. 

Dr. McDowell's successor was the Kev. Bethel Judd, 
D. D., who was elected in 1807 and remained as Princi- 
pal until about 1812. The Rev. Mr. Allen, in his Notes, 
tells us that Dr. Judd ^^ was very much respected in the 
church * * * and in 1811, in the absence of the Bishop, 
had presided over the Convention." Mr. Higginbottom 
dying the next year, the College was left without any 
elected Principal or Vice-Principal, from about 1813 to 
1816, when the Rev. Henry Lyon Davis, D. D., was elected 
Vice-Principal, and in 1820, Principal, holding the latter 
office until 1824. Dr. Davis was the father of the bril- 
liant orator, the late Hon. Henry Winter Davis, Repre- 
sentative in Congress from Baltimore City; and Mr. Allen 
tells us that the father '^ was a man of much learning, of 
vigorous mind and of commanding jDcrsonal stature. ' ' Dr. 
Davis was succeeded by the Rev. William Rafferty, D. D., 
who held the office of Principal from 1824 until 1831. He 
was elected Professor of ancient languages in 1819 and 
Vice-Principal in 1820, which office he held until his pro- 
motion in 1824. Dr. Rafferty was a native of Ireland, 
and, we are told, an accomplished Latin and Greek scholar. 
He was succeeded in 1831 by the Rev. Hector Humphreys, 
of whose administration more will be said further on. 

Any allusion here, however, to the college faculty of 
this period would be incomplete without mention of the 
name of Edward Sparks, M. D., professor of ancient lan- 
guages for more than thirty years from 1822. Dr. Sparks 
was a native of Ireland, with marked and some of the best 
characteristics of his race. He, early in life, married into 



34 



the Pinkney family. He was Acting Principal^ in the 
absence of that officer, and inclined naturally to strict 
discipline; hut he will he long rememhered hy many, who 
came under his tuition, for his thorough familiarity with 
the Greek and Latin courses. 

A part of this time, from the accession of Dr. Judd in 
1807, to the close of Dr. KafPerty's incumbency, was the 
period of St. John's hardest struggle to retain its right 
to be known by its well-earned title of a college. Stripped 
in 1806 of its whole revenue derived from the State, as 
we have seen, it yet sent forth two graduates in 1810, each 
with the degree of B. A. , one of whom subsequently be- 
came the first territorial Judge of Florida upon the acqui- 
sition of that territory by the United States, and the other 
lived, and died but a few years since — an octogenarian — 
in the city where stands his Alma Mater. Alumni and citi- 
zens of Annapolis, ye well may dwell a moment upon the 
memory of Dr. John Ridout. His name and that of his 
senior — Dr. Dennis Claude, an alumnus of 1799, who pre- 
ceded him in death but a few years — must bring home to 
many of you, still living, memories of two men — noble 
specimens of God's noblest work. Dispensing good 
where/er they came, — ''they knew their art but not their 
trade." Not alone shall their children rise up and call 
them blessed. Many of us can see, in our mind's eye, 
these lovable, goodly men, and of each one we may verily 
say: '' He was a man, take him for all in all, I shall not 
look upon his like again." Dr. Claude belonged to that 
rare school best described by an anecdote told of the State 
Treasurer, Mr. George Mackubin, another alumnus of St. 
John's, of the class of 1806, at whose death Dr. Claude 



35 



succeeded to the office. When Mr. Mackubin was first 
tendered this office of Treasurer, he said he could not ac- 
cept it, consistently with his ideas of propriety, because 
he was a stockholder in the bank in which the funds of 
the State had for years been kept on deposit. When urged 
to accept, as a matter of duty, he promptly sold every 
share of his stock in that bank before he qualified as cus- 
todian of the State's funds. Dr. Claude was a man tall 
in stature, erect, and of dignified mien, with elegant and 
courtly manners. His kindly eye was yet as piercing as 
an eagle's. When a surgeon in the Army, tradition says, 
he fought a duel with Greneral Winfield Scott, both then 
young men. A knightly antagonist, truly, for the great 
soldier, who, as he rode down the line in review of his 
troops, man and horse of colossal proportions, in full sight 
of the Mexican forces, is said by one of his officers to have 
looked the very god of war. General Scott in his Memoirs 
makes mention of Dr. Claude in kindly terms. 

From the next year, 1811, to 1830, inclusive, among 
the graduates and alumni of St. John's appear names of 
men distinguished in the State and Nation, and of these, 
in the order of class-years, the names of Keverdy John- 
son, U. S. Senator, Attorney-G-eneral of the U. S., and 
Minister to England; Thomas Stockett Alexander, LL. 
D. ; John Johnson, Chancellor of the State; Hon. Alex- 
ander Kandall, M. A., Member of Congress and Attor- 
ney-General of Maryland; John Henry Alexander, LL. 
D. ; the Eight Rev. William Pinkney, LL. D., Episcopal 
Bishop of the Diocese of Maryland and the District of 
Columbia; the Hon. William H. Tuck, M. A., Judge of 
the Court of Appeals of Maryland; and Surgeon Ninian 



36 



Pinkney, LL. D., Medical Director, U. S. Navy. The 
versatile genius of Jolin Henry Alexander, distinguished 
in the Church, in letters, science and the Muses, who was 
graduated in 1827, when less than fifteen years of age, has 
illumined hoth Euroj)e and America. The mere mention 
of these names shows that St. John's can boast of more 
jewels than did Cornelia. The Gracchi were hut a single 
pair, hut their Alma Mater, in the persons of the two 
brothers Johnson, the brothers Alexander, and the broth- 
ers Pinkney, has given the State a diadem of brilliants, 
as a crown forever. 

The name of another alumnus must be added to this 
period, and linked with that of one of the class of 1799. 
I allude to Judges Nicholas Brewer and Thomas Beale 
Dorsey — citizens respectively of Annapolis and of the 
County. Judges Dorsey and Brewer were so long asso- 
ciated on the bench, their faces, for years, were so famil- 
iar to the citizens of this judicial circuit, that their names 
are indissolubly associated together by its bar and citi- 
zens. These gentlemen belong among the brightest of 
the array of jurists of the country. They adorned the 
bench of their own State — cojnpeers of Marshall, Taney, 
B. K. Curtis and Story. Judge Dorsey died in 1855, and 
Judge Brewer like him was gathered to the sleep of the 
valiant and just, in 1864. The triumvirate of Maryland's 
judiciary among the older alumni of St. John's would be 
incomplete without here adding the name of that learned, 
wise and good man, Judge Alexander Contee Magruder, 
an alumnus of 1794, a member of the Executive Council, 
State Senator, and Judge, and Official Keporter, of the 
Court of Appeals. 



37 



During this period of noble work on the part of the Col- 
lege, it appears from a brief sketch of St. John's, pub- 
lished in 1835, that: ^^ In 1821, atameetingof the Alumni, 
in the Senate Chamber at Annapolis, a plan of subscrip- 
tion was drawn up, a condition being inserted that the 
whole should be void, unless the sum of ten thousand dol- 
lars should be obtained. Several names were subscribed 
upon the spot, but no agent was appointed; the requisite 
sum was not obtained, and the subscription paper has been 
lost. The only record of it that remains is the payment 
of the following sum, which was discharged by the donor, 
though not required to do so by the terms: 

^'Isaac McKim $200." 

ButtheKev. Hector Humphreys, D. D., when but thirty- 
four years of age, was elected Principal of the College in 
1831, and held this office until 1857. Largely through his 
immediate efforts the college was saved to continue its 
beneficent career, instead of collapsing without further 
struggle. At the annual commencement in 1832, Dr. 
Humphreys delivered his inaugural address before the com- 
pany assembled, and by it inspired the confidence of the 
public in himself and in his abilities. A confidence which 
in the course of his career, he more than fulfilled. 
Brighter prospects immediately dawned upon the college. 
We are told by Mr. Proud that to the President's ^'perse- 
vering efforts, and personal influence with members of the 
Legislature, is also in a great measure to be attributed 
the Act of Compromise of 1832." By this act, the State 
agreed to add two thousand dollars to the sum of one thou- 



sand dollars granted annually in 1811, as heretofore said, 
' and added to the Board of Visitors and Governors, as mem- 
bers ex-qfficio, for the time being, the Governor of the 
State, the President of the Senate, the Speaker of the 
House of Delegates, the Chancellor of the State, and the 
Judges of the Court of Appeals; the Governor being ex- 
qfficio the President of the Board. The citizens of the State 
then came bravely to the rescue under Dr. Humphreys' 
active efforts in St. John's behalf. By a resolution of the 
Board of Visitors and Governors, adopted 'February 15th, 
1834, the Doctor was appointed with others upon a com- 
mittee to solicit subscriptions for the benefit of the college, 
to be applied to the erection of buildings and other im- 
provements. Travelling throughout the State, Dr. 
Humphreys succeeded in securing about eleven thousand 
dollars for this purpose, as appears by a long list of sub- 
scribers containing the names of many citizens of the 
State. The large building on the south side of McDowell 
Hall (since called Humphreys' Hall,) was then erected 
with these funds and from other carefully husbanded re- 
sources, and we are told in the short historic sketch of 
the College, published in 1835, to which I have before 
referred and from which I quote, as follows: '^The cere- 
mony of laying the Corner Stone was preceded by prayer, 
by the Kev. Dr. Humphreys, the President of the Col- 
lege. The following inscription, enclosed in a sealed glass 
vase, was deposited in a metallic box, under the stone: 

'This corner-stone was laid on Thursday, the 18th day 
of June, A. D., 1835, by the Hon. John Stephen, Presid- 
ing Judge in the Court of Appeals, the Kev. Hector Hum- 
phreys, D. D., President of St. John's College, and John 



39 



Johnson, Esq., one of the Visitors and Governors being 
present and assisting; His Excellency, Andrew J ohn» o ri ^ Jltz,cJu^^^ 
being President of the United States; His Excellency 
James Thomas, being Governor of Maryland, and the 
Hon. John S. Martin, Thomas Veazey, George C. Wash- 
ington, Nathaniel F. Williams, and Gwinn Harris, being 
the Executive Council; and Dr. Dennis Claude being 
Mayor of Annapolis. 

Kamsay Waters, ~j 

John Johnson, > Building Committee/ " 

Nicholas Brewer, Jr., J 

Upon this occasion the Presiding Judge of the Court 
of Appeals made the dedicatory remarks appropriate to 
the ceremony, and the orator of the day — the Hon. John 
Johnson (subsequently the last of Maryland's chancel- 
lors) made a most forcible and eloquent address. Nulli- 
fication as a remedy for the evils complained of had but 
recently strained the country to the verge of civil war, 
but the Chancellor, while expressing thorough belief that 
the ^ ^victims" were honest in their errors, with great 
perspicuity and force pointed out their ^^ delusion." His 
patriotic address is worthy of a place in the archives of 
the Nation. 

More than twenty years later, August 5, 1857, by reso- 
lution of the Alumni Association, the name of Humphreys ' 
Hall was formally conferred upon this building. In the 
meantime, between 1855 and 1857, the Professors' block 
of houses was built on the South side of Humphreys' Hall; 
and Pinkney Hall and the Principal's and Vice-Prin- 
cipal's houses were built on the North side of McDowell 



40 



Hall, which about this time had this name formally con- 
ferred upon it. 

Ably seconded by a faculty consisting of Professors of 
Ancient Languages, Mathematics, Modern Languages, 
English studies and of the Grammar Department, with, 
at times, assistants and tutors in these departments. Dr. 
Humphreys led a most remarkable career, which has re- 
flected undying credit upon the institution under his 
charge. 

^'Hector Humphreys," says Mr. Proud, ^Svas born at 
Canton, Hartford (Jo., Connecticut, June 8th, 1797, the 
youngest member of a family often children. His father, 
George Humphreys, was the fifth of a long-lived family 
of five sons and five daughters, and held several public 
offices with credit, having been a Judge of the Court of 
Probate, and a representative, for nearly twenty years, 
of his native town in the General Assembly. " Dr. Hum- 
phreys ''entered Yale College a freshman in September, 
1814, as one of a class of one hundred * * * and his 
college course was a succession of triumphs, terminated 
at the commencement of 1818, by his taking the first 
honors without a rival, in the estimation of the faculty, 
or his class-mates, to dispute his claim." 

Upon leaving college Dr. Humphreys studied law. ' 'In 
due course he was admitted to the bar, and opened an 
ofiice in New Haven, which he occupied for about one 
year; having received from Gov. Wolcott the appoint- 
ment of Judge Advocate of the State." Subsequently, 
circumstances caused him to enter the EpiscojDal Church 
and "he was ordained Presbyter, March 6th, 1825, by 
Bishop Brownell, " in the meantime having been a pro- 



41 



fessor of ancient languages in Washington (now Trinity) 
College, Hartford, ^ Vliich presided over by Bishop Brow- 
nell, numbered among its members the present Bishop 
Doane of ^N'ew Jersey, Bishop Horatio Potter of New York, 
the Kev. Dr. Hawkes and other men of kindred mind and 
attainments." During this time he had also ^ ^officiated 
with great acceptableness and with marked success, as 
Kector of St. Luke's Church, Glastonbury, about eight 
miles from Hartford." 

These facts are gathered from Mr. Proud's ^^Biograph- 
ical Sketch" of Dr. Humphreys, read at the Annual 
Commencement of St. John's College August 5, 1857, 
and published by request of the Association of the Alumni . 
In this same paper the author referring to Dr. Hum- 
phreys' work at St. John's, further states: 

^'Besides the oral and experimental lectures elicited by 
the daily recitations, there were stated courses of written 
lectures, each one hour in the delivery, illustrating with 
severe and faithful minuteness the several branches 
taught. I have seen a list in his own hand-writing of 
the titles of these lectures, with headings of their varied 
subjects, — which embraced fourteen in Political Economy, 
twenty-seven in Latin and Greek Literature, twenty-seven 
in Chemistry and Geology, thirty-four in Natural Phi- 
losophy, and six in Astronomy — making one hundred and 
eight lectures delivered by him in the regular annual 
course, besides the several recitations of each day!" 

I would be undutiful did I not here add, to that of 
others, my own testimony to the eminent worth, zeal and 
wonderful acquirements of this truly pious and remark- 
able man. As boys in the Grammar Department we all 
4 



42 



felt a sense of respect, amounting to awe, whenever we 
chanced to be in Dr. Humphreys' presence. These feel- 
ings changed to love and veneration when we came under 
his instruction. By his exertions and direction was pro- 
cured a well selected philosophical apparatus, for use in 
different branches of physics, and a cabinet of minerals, * 
fossils, and shells, and a collection of soils and marls from 
different parts of the State. He directed the construc- 
tion and outfit of a very good laboratory, and he was the 
custodian of the standard instruments of weight and 
measure belonging to the State, the foundations and cases 
for which were built under his directions in a basement 
room of McDowell Hall. He knew not how to be idle. . 
His work, while prodigious, was most painstaking and 
faithful. In chemistry, besides our recitations from the 
text-book, and his lectures, he carefully, in our presence, 
analysed soils, both qualitatively and quantitatively. He 
instructed us in experimental philosophy, and in practi- 
cal composition and elocution; and from the most approved 
treatises of the day, we recited to him in Mineralogy and 
Geology, Evidences of Christianity, Moral and Intel- 
lectual Philosophy, Rhetoric and Logic. Under his in- 
struction we studied Butler's Analogy, Kame's Elements 
of Criticism, Elementary Political Economy, and Kent's 
Commentaries on International Law and the Jurispru- 
dence of the United States. He taught us the use of the 
quadrant and how to find the latitude of a place by a 
meridian observation, and its longitude by time-sights 
and the chronometer. He discoursed to us on Astronomy 
and taught us to use the College telescope, and lectured 
upon most of the subjects above named, besides instruct- 



43 



ing uSj in the junior and senior years^ in the final courses 
of Latin and Greek, in which languages he was deeply 
versedj and in the beauties of whose literature he took 
great delight. He took care in our case, as was his custom 
with all the classes in the senior year, to examine the 
class in and discourse upon English Grammar, in his 
endeavor to supplement a practical acquirement of the 
mother-tongue by an intelligent comprehension of its 
syntax, fortified by reason and rule. 

Dr. Humphreys' presence was commanding. He was 
tall of stature, with a noble face, and was possessed of a 
deeply sonorous though melodious voice. As a pulpit 
orator he was eloquent; and his sermons, always deeply 
impressive, were often beautiful in poetic imagery. He 
was ever ready to fill the pulpit of an absent brother 
minister, or to assist in various local duties of neighbor- 
ing parishes. Several memorial sermons of rare beauty 
were delivered by him upon the deaths of persons of emi- 
nent worth in the community. The next to the last 
Baccalaureate sermon which he preached was delivered 
to the class of '55, in St. Anne's Church. I well recall 
the circumstances. He had then lost all of his sons, three 
in number, the eldest a graduate of the class of '41, 
who subsequently was graduated from West Point and 
died at Carlisle Barracks from disease contracted in the 
Mexican War. These bereavements were sore trials, and 
though bravely borne, served greatly to undermine his 
health; and he felt in 1855, that his end was not far off. With 
much effort, he delivered the sermon. He had not strength 
to compose one specially for the occasion, but delivered 
the sermon which he had preached to the class of '41, 



44 



of which his son, Lieutenant George S. Humphreys, had 
been a member, and of which the President of the Board 
of Visitors and Grovernors, who has just addressed us, is 
a surviving member, — the text being: ^^He taught me 
also and said unto me. Let thine heart retain my words: 
keep my commandments and live/' (Prov., iv. 4). He 
concluded this sermon somewhat in these words — '^What 
I said to the class of '41 I have now said to the class 
of '55." And then having referred to the respective 
careers of the members of the former class, he added — 
^^and one is not. " The congregation present was visibly 
affected, and amid its profoundest sympathy he pronounced 
the benediction. Though consciously failing, he presided 
at the Annual Commencement in 1856, but ere the next 
Commencement season came, he calmly passed away. 
His death occurred the 25th of January, 1857, and he 
sleeps the sleep of the righteous in the beautiful spot 
hard-bye, whose shores are laved by the same waters that 
lave the borders of this campus (the scene for so many 
years of his useful life) ere they mingle with the waters 
of the classic Severn. 

A funeral sermon, appropriately entitled ^^The Cloud 
of Witnesses," was delivered the 8th of February, 1857, 
in St. Anne's Church on the occasion of Dr. Humphreys' 
death, dedicated to the students of St. John's, by the 
Eev. Cleland K. Nelson, D. D., then Rector of St. Anne's 
Parish. This tribute was clothed in beautiful language 
from the text — ^^We also are compassed about with so 
great a cloud of witnesses" — (Hebrews, xii. 1,) and 
fitly perpetuates the testimony to the exalted character 
and purity of life of the deceased. 



45 



The necrology prepared by Mr. Proud includes the 
names of a number of alumni graduated during the period 
of Dr. Humphreys' incumbency, all of pure and upright 
men; some of great talent and promise ere they passed 
away. But none purer or more upright than John G. 
Proudj Jr. J of the class of '34, belong to this, or any 
other period in the history of the College. He died August 
28, 1883. His ode to ^^The old Poplar Tree of the Old 
College Green" is worthy of a place beside ^ ^Woodman, 
spare that Tree." It was read before a meeting of the 
alumni, February 22nd, 1852. Its reading inspired John 
Henry Alexander, impromptu, to compose a sonnet to 
the old tree, in graceful compliment to Mr. Proud's verse. 
These classic productions, including Dr. John Shaw's 
beautiful sonnet, written early in the century, are as 
deeply impressed in your memories, my brethren of the 
alumni, as is the old tree itself, now clothed in the exu- 
berant foliage of summer's solstician season. May this 
old tree long survive to inspire the muse throughout gen- 
erations yet unborn; and, when its life shall have gone 
out forever, may its youthful offspring, whose roots now 
await but the earthy covering which in a few moments 
will be laid upon them, by the fair hands of the lady who 
now so graciously presides as Mistress of the Executive 
Mansion,* then serve as a land-mark to keep alive and 
green for other spans of years the memory of the old tree 
and its legendary history. 

The record, for this same period, of those living gives 
us the names of upright and talented occupants of the 

* Mrs. Jackson, wife of the Governor of Maryland. 



46 



pulpit and bench, members of the bar, officers of State- 
governmentSj and of the Army and Navy. 

TheKev. ClelandK. Nelson, D. D., worthily succeeded 
Dr. Humphreys, and assuming the office of Principal of 
the College in 1857, retained the chair until 1861. A 
class was graduated under his regime in each of the years 
1857, 1858, 1859 and 1860. The Law, Medicine, the State, 
the Church, the Army and the Navy, and the Congress 
of the United States claims each a fair proportion of the 
number of these graduates, about one-half of whom have 
had the degree of M. A. conferred upon them by their 
Alma Mater. 

And now comes a decade, half of which may be but 
passingly alluded to, in which St. John's conferred no 
degree, nor sent forth from its portals a graduate. Grim 
visaged-war raged and, unlike at the Temple of Janus, 
the doors of St. John's were closed. Of its youth thence 
departing, some — their warfare o'er — 

"Dream of fighting fields no more, 
Days of danger, nights of waking." 

Maryland lay on the border-line of the conflicting forces. 
The dogs of war, once let loose, it was practically all one 
way North, it was all one way South. But in the border- 
commonwealths, literally brother was arrayed against 
brother, father against son, and son against father. And 
even tenderer, the tenderest of all ties, were severed. 
The Naval Academy, a school wherein is taught the 
art of war, was removed from Annapolis, out of sound of 
hostile cannons' roar, that its novices might study the 
rudiments of their profession, undisturbed by war's 



47 



alarms; and the grounds and buildings of St. John's, as 
well as those of the Naval Academy, were devoted by the 
Grovernment, as hospitals, to the shelter and care of sick- 
ness and suffering. The Florence Nightingale of America 
came with her ministering spirits and soothed the sorrovf s 
of the dying, or nursed others to health and strength, 
only to return again to scenes of carnage. 

But smiling peace again her gentle reign restored. And 
may the portals of St. John's, then reopened to fair learn- 
ing's sway, never again close, in either peace or war. 

Before taking up the new history of St. John's, subse- 
quent to the suspension of its functions as a College,— 
though during such suspension, a school was maintained 
by the Principal of its Grammar Department, Professor 
William H. Thompson, M. A., an alumnus of the class of 
'38, by virtue of its chartered rights and the authority 
of its Visitors and Governors — some short account may be 
given of its Literary Societies, the Theta/ Delta^ Phi, and 
the Everett, and of some of the more noted addresses de- 
livered on Commencement days and on other occasions 
during the ante-bellum period. 

February 22nd, 1827, Francis Scott Key delivered an 
address before the Association of the Alumni and the com- 
pany assembled. It is needless to add that, aside from its 
other merits, it expressed the depth of his love and venera- 
tion for his Alma Mater, in terms becoming the nature and 
abilities of its author. Upon a similar occasion, February 
22nd of the following year, the Hon. JohnC. Herbert, B. 
A., of Maryland, of the class of 1794, delivered an address 
of great philosophic force, and in language most felicitous 
and chaste. The inaugural address of Dr. Humphreys, 



48 



in 1832, and Hon. John Johnson's address, in 1835, upon 
the occasion of the laying of the Corner Stone of Hum- 
phreys Hall, have already been referred to. 

On July 4th, 1837, Thomas Holme Hagner, M. A., of 
the class of '35, a native of the District of Columbia, and 
then a student of law in Annapolis, delivered an address, 
accompanied by the reading of the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence, before the Theta, Delta, Phi Society. Upon 
perusal, this address, coming from a recent graduate, yet 
pursuing his legal studies, cannot fail to strike the reader 
as phenomenal. In its display of historic and philosophic 
knowledge, and extent of legal research, in its cogency of 
reasoning, beauty of diction and fire of patriotism, it is a 
deliverance which one would suppose could only have been 
the product of the highest intellectual gifts, at the height 
of maturity. The College necrology tells us that he died 
the 26th of March, 1848, indefatigable in his work as 
Chairman of the Judiciary Committee in the first State 
Legislature of Florida. His adopted State lost a coun- 
sellor, in his early death, at a time when such men could 
least be spared. 

On the 22nd of February, 1842, the Hon. John Tayloe 
Lomax of Virginia, an alumnus of the class of 1797, deliv- 
ered an address of great beauty, re-echoing the senti- 
ments expressed by his brother collegian. Key, to whom 
he feelingly alluded. 

At one of its meetings, held in 1845, or 1846, by the 
Theta, Delta, Phi, Society, which had been inaugurated 
about 1832, some of its members became somewhat hilari- 
ous, we are told; so much so as to bring into the midst of 
the meeting, from his residence in McDowell Hall, the 

^ ^. M^i^^<:u^^ u-xU Hd^ xle^ 



49 



venerable form of Dr. Humphreys. Calling the meeting 
to order^ the Principal^ or President as he was commonly 
called, addressed it thus: ^^ Young gentlemen, this meet- 
ing stands adjourned sine die. " It is superfluous, perhaps, 
to add that the Theta, Delta, Phi, did then and there 
adjourn sine die^ and, as a Society, was known no more. 
Some students, upon a former occasion, were assembled 
in the Commons, at a convivial meeting, so said tradition 
when I was at College, whereat they became so boisterous 
as to bring upon the scene the same dignified person. As 
he opened the door, one of the students rose, and amid 
the silence of the awe-stricken crowd, looking the ^Presi- 
dent" straight in the eye, exclaimed — 

" Hector, Hector, son of Priam, 
Did you ever see a man as drunk as I am?'''' 

The ready wit of the speaker, showing that perhaps the 
condition of himself and the others was not so bad as feared, 
probably caused the forgiveness of all; for it is not told 
that any punishments followed. The youthful hero of 
this anecdote, afterwards served his country, with credit, 
in the Mexican War. He bears a distinguished name and 
has been awarded its highest honors by his native State. 
He is now known as a man of affairs among the men of the 
country. 

On the 22nd of February, 1849, the Hon. Wm. H. Tuck, 
M. A., of the class of '27, delivered an address bearing 
much on the educational problem and requirements of the 
times. This address was marked by the Judge's well 
known great analytic powers and legal acumen, and by 



50 



a carefully studied statistical review of the subject under 
consideration. 

On the 22nd of February, 1850, the Hon. Alexander 
Kandall, M. A., of the class of '22, delivered an address 
largely bearing, with prophetic warning, upon the war- 
cloud, then no bigger than a man's hand — the compro- 
mise measures of 1850 then pending before Congress. 
With great force, the treasures of the Union, as set forth 
by the Father of his Country, and the great men of the 
nation, and the moral of the Koman fasces, illustrated in 
the national motto, ^'E Pluribus Unum," were brought 
before the assembled company of students, alumni and 
citizens, the address concluding with the verse: — 

" Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just, 
And this be our motto, — 'In God is our trust,' 
And the Star Spangled Banner in triumph shall wave 
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave ! " 

But a few years since (June 14, 1877) passed the cen- 
tennial day of the adoption of that Star Spangled Banner 
by Congress, one hundred and twelve years ago this month, 
in substantially the present form, the stars and stripes 
numbering thirteen of each. In 1794, by resolution of 
Congress, the stripes as well as stars were made to num- 
ber fifteen, then the number of States. But in 1818 the 
stripes were reduced, by resolution of Congress, to thir- 
teen, and provision was made to increase the stars to the 
number of States as new States should be admitted into 
the Union. May we not here well recall, with those words 
of Key above quoted, the following lines in that familiar 
apotheosis composed by the youthful Joseph Kodman 



51 



Drake, collaborator with Bryant and Halleck in their early 
days, and author of ^^The Culprit Fay" : — 

" Flag of the free, heart's hope, heart's home, 

By angel-hands to valor given. 
Thy stars have lit the welkin dome, 

And all thy hues were born of heaven. 
Forever float that standard sheet, 

Where breathes the foe but falls before us. 
With freedom's soil beneath our feet 

And freedom's banner floating o'er us ! " 

The Legislature of Maryland, at its last session, appro- 
priated a sum of money to assist the '^ Francis Scott Key 
Monument Association " in erecting a monument to Key's 
memory, in the further adornment of the Monumental 
City. May the Congress of the United States not longer 
defer the erection of a tomb to mark the spot in Frederick 
City where lie the remains of the Nation's patriot and poet. 

On the Commencement days of February 23d, 1852, Feb- 
ruary 22nd, 1855, and August 6th, 1856, addresses were 
delivered respectively by the Kev. William Pinkney, Dr. 
Ninian Pinkney, and Dr. Kussell Trevett, Professor of An- 
cient Languages at St. John's. It is unnecessary to say 
more of these addresses than that they bore the stamp of 
the men — the erudition and graceful and poetic language 
of the Bishop; the native oratorical force of the Surgeon; 
and the cultivation and classic lore of the Professor. 

The Everett Literary Society took its rise about 1857, 
but terminated its existence in 1861. 

Turning now to the Phoenix — St. John's of 1866 — its 
Visitors and Governors, obtaining the means and encour- 



52 



agement voted to it in that year by the Legislature^ as 
heretofore told, elected Henry Barnard, LL. D., then but 
recently the IT. S. Commissioner of Education, Principal 
of the College. Dr. Barnard organized its several depart- 
ments anew, and with a preparatory department, a fresh- 
man class and a faculty of professors, St. John's again 
engaged in the educational work of making men and 
scholars of the youth in its charge. Dr. Barnard had 
travelled over the State, making interest for the College, 
and was very active in his efforts to restore it to fame, but 
after opening the College, in September, 1866, he remained 
in office less than a year, resigning in the following sum- 
mer. He is now residing at Hartford, Connecticut. 

Dr. James C. Welling, LL. D., succeeded Dr. Barnard, 
as Principal, and the College-term opened in September, 
1867, under his charge, with one hundred and fifteen stu- 
dents. Dr. Welling resigned in 1870, and has held, for 
years, the chair of President of Columbian University. 
Under his administration no class was graduated from 
St. John's, but the junior class com^^leted its junior year. 
That Dr. Welling's administration was eminently effi- 
cient and successful we have the testimony, than which 
none could be higher, of Professor Hiram Corson, LL. D., 
of Cornell University, who tells us, in an address delivered 
on the 7th of July, 1875, at the annual Commencement on 
that day at St. John's, that, ^^a great impulse was im- 
parted to the prosperity of the College, by the faithful 
and energetic administration of Dr. Welling. ' ' He adds : 
^^When he resigned * * * the college had made a great 
move forward in the scholarship of its students, some of 
whom, now before me, would have done honor to the classes 



53 



of the best equipped Colleges of the land. ' ' Professor Cor- 
son was then attached to Cornell, having resigned his pro- 
fessorship of Anglo-Saxon and English Literature and 
Elocution, held by him at St. John's from 1867 to 1870. 

Dr. Welling was succeeded by James M. Garnett, 
LL. D., in October of the same year, 1870, who held the 
chair of Principal for ten years. Dr. Garnett's numer- 
ous able reports to the General Assembly, his researches 
into the financial legislation affecting the College and 
into its general history, and his able farewell address to 
the students, delivered on Commencement Day, the 30th 
of June, 1880, all show his devotion to their welfare and 
to that of the College. A class, each year, was graduated 
during his whole term of office. 

Dr. Garnett was immediately succeeded by the Kev. 
John McDowell Leavitt, D. D., who continued four years 
as Principal. A distinguishing feature of his adminis- 
tration was a radical departure from the traditional cur- 
riculum of old St. John's. Of the classic sect it had 
theretofore been of the strictest. Dr. Leavitt organized a 
Department of Mechanical Engineering, obtained the 
detail of an Engineer Officer by the Navy Department, as 
instructor in mathematics and engineering, and started 
the equipment of a machine shop for practical instruction. 
He also endeavored to obtain the services of an officer 
of the Army as instructor in military tactics and other 
branches of learning necessary to the education of a sol- 
dier. This detail, however, came later. A class was 
graduated during each year of Dr. Leavitt's term of office. 
Dr. Leavitt thus, before taking his departure, placed St. 
John's squarely up with the times, and en rapport with the 



54 



junior institutions of the country which had sprung up 
with its growth. He resigned in 1884, and now pursues 
the intellectual delights of literary labor in Brooklyn, 
N. Y. He has come back to be present to-day with us, 
and the graceful muse of this scholar among the literati 
of the times will, before we part, sing to us, by request 
of the Alumni, a poem in commemoration of St. John's 
One Hundreth natal day. 

Upon the departure of Dr. Leavitt, the curriculum of 
the College was preserved, its interest stoutly maintained, 
and the duties of Principal performed, by Professor Wil- 
liam Hersey Hopkins, M. A., Ph. D., long a faithful 
professor at the College, and an alumnus of the class of 
'59. During his term of office an Army officer was added 
to the corps of professors. Two classes were graduated 
under the administration of Acting Principal Hopkins, 
in 1885 and 1886; after which he resigned his position at 
St. John's to accept the presidency of the Woman's Meth- 
odist College in Baltimore, over which he still presides. 

Principal Thomas Fell, LL. D., now holds the adminis- 
tration of St. John's, having been elected in 1886, the 
term-course of that year commencing under his executive 
authority. His zeal and activity manifested in the con- 
duct of the affairs of the College are well known to you, 
my brethren of the Alumni, and in particular to those of 
you who are Visitors and Governors, who are doubtless 
satisfied that he will take care that your rules are faith- 
fully executed. A class was graduated in 1887, and an- 
other in 1888, and to-morrow the class of '89 will be 
awarded its degrees, leaving college-classes in regular 
order of succession, and a full corps of professors in its 



55 



several DepartmentSj including an Army Officer, a gra- 
duate of West Point, and an Engineer Officer, a gradu- 
ate of the Naval Academy. A special Preparatory De- 
partment also exists, for the instruction of candidates 
for entrance to the Naval Academy. 

Since the closing of the hiatus in the work of the Col- 
lege in 1866, the sons which St. John's has given to 
the world have well fulfilled their missions. The Church, 
the Law and Medicine, and various other departments 
of human effort and industry have been enriched by their 
presence and energies. The survivors are yet young 
enough to reach the summit of their several vocations 
or ambitions. One of the class of "72 already adorns the 
Supreme Bench of Baltimore City,* and another, of the 
class of '73, is an eloquent divine who, as the orator of 
the day by request of the Alumni, will address you, and 
upon whose time I fear I have already too long intruded. 
Another son. Commander Dennis Mullan of the Navy, 
bearing at the time St. John's honorary degree of M. A., 
was on duty with his brother heroes in the recent Samoan 
hurricane, and, of her dead. Lieutenant James Lockwood 
of the Army, died after extending the ^^ boundary of 
known land twenty-eight miles nearer the pole," reach- 
ing the ^^most northerly point on land and that ever has 
been attained by man." 

Among notable addresses delivered before the alumni 
and Philokalian and Philomathean Societies of the Col- 
lege, which Societies were established soon after 1866, 
are those, in the order of their delivery, of the Hon. Fred- 

*Eon. Henry David Harlan. 



56 



erick Stone, M. A., of Charles County, July 29tli, 1868, 
an alumnus of '39, and a Judge of the Court of Appeals ; the 
Hon. Geo. Wm. Brown, LL. D., of the Baltimore Bar and 
Bench, July 27th, 1869; the Rev. Orlando Hutton, D. D., 
July 27th, 1870, an alumnus of '34 ; Dr. James C. Welling, 
July 25th, 1871; the Hon. Alexander B. Hagner, a son 
of Princeton upon whom St. John's has conferred the de- 
gree of LL. D., July 30th, 1872; Surgeon Ninian Pinkney, 
July 29th, 1873; the Hon. Andrew G. Chapman, M. A., of 
Charles County, July 30th, 1873, an alumnus of '58; a 
Baccalaureate sermon delivered by the Rev. Thomas U. 
Dudley, D. D., June 28th, 1874, of Christ Church, Bal- 
timore, now Bishop of Kentucky; the address of Professor 
Hiram Corson, above referred to, July 7th, 1875; the 
farewell address of Dr. Garnett, before referred to, June 
30th, 1880; and an address by Dr. Leavitt, on the ^^ En- 
gine, Anvil, Lathe and Foundry," delivered the 15th of 
June, 1881. 

Of various Reports, Memorials, and other papers pre- 
pared at different times, by the Board of Visitors and 
.Governors, officers of the college and others, addressed 
to the citizens of the State and the General Assembly, 
time does not suffice to make special mention. Much of 
the matter therein contained has been condensed in these 
pages. But a moment's time may be spared here to make 
brief reference, in particular to the addresses, in the list 
above given, of Dr. Welling and the Hon. Alex. B. Hag- 
ner, Associate Judge of the Supreme Court of the Dis- 
trict of Columbia. That of Dr. Welling, entitled '' The 
Communion of Scholars, Visible and Invisible," deliv- 
ered before the Philokalian and Philomathean Societies, 



57 



was not only brimming with classic lore, but sparkled 
with originality, native wit, and expressions of good fel- 
lowship with his brethren of the communion. Judge 
Hagner's address before the same Societies, touching, in 
our day, ^^the universal diffusion of knowledge among 
men, " stamped the effort as the production of the scholar- 
jurist, versed in science and literature, not alone pertain- 
ing to his profession, while at the same time possessed of 
those other accomplishments which impart dignity to the 
law, through the persons of its expounders, and compel 
respect and obedience to its majesty. 

Its Kegister shows that since the year 1830, St. John's 
has conferred the honorary degree of D. D. upon seven- 
teen distinguished divines, and the honorary degree of 
LL. D. upon twenty-four scholars, men eminent in the 
State and Nation, in addition to the various degrees con- 
ferred upon its own graduates, since the year 1793. 

The College Library, many years since, was enriched 
by additions to its shelves, by bequest of Lewis Neth, of 
Annapolis, an alumnus of 1806, and a few years since by 
the gift of valuable works by Dr. Thomas B. Wilson, of 
Philadelphia. Additions are carefully made, as means 
will permit, and its shelves now contain about six thou- 
sand volumes. 

Mention must not be neglected of the important ad- 
juncts pertaining to athletics. The Gymnasium and the 
Boat Club now supplement the Base-ball Nine and the 
Foot Ball Team, and St. John's cannot be defeated in any 
competitive exhibition where prizes are given for the mens 
Sana in corpore sano. 



58 



My attempt to outline St. John's history now rounds 
out its hundred years of chartered existence as a College, 
and brings its career down to the exercises of to-day, in 
commemoration of its Centenary. Briefly now contrast 
the limited environment of St. John's in 1789 with its 
present environment: — 

In the first place, we are struck with this instance of 
history repeating itself in a certain round of events. 
Under Queen Anne we have seen King William's School 
organized, and subsequently transmute itself, under a 
Master from Dublin University, into St. John's College, 
transferring both Master and Pupils. To-day, under 
Queen Victoria, London University supplies St. John's 
with its Principal. If Massachusetts sent to the Puritan 
men of Severn missionaries to instruct them in their 
religious duties, prior to the birth of St. John's, to-day 
St. John's supplies one of Boston's pulpits with an alum- 
nus of '73,* our orator of the day, whose learning and 
eloquence were his passports to his call to the Athens of 
America. Thus linked through time as Boston and An- 
napolis are, the following beautiful passage from Bishop 
Pinkney's address, before referred to, seems particularly 
appropriate to be repeated here: 

^^It is said that Boston is eloquent in incident and asso- 
ciation; and he must be dead to the beauty and power of 
all that is rich in incident and thrilling in circumstance, 
who does not concede the justice of the high eulogium. 
But Boston is not a whit more eloquent in those mighty 
springs of human action than Annapolis. If the tea-ex- 
ploit of one wakes the patriot bosom of her youth to high 

*Rev. Leighton Parks, M. A., Eector of Emmanuel Church, Boston, 



59 



enthusiasm, the other boasts of a like illustrious exploit. 
If Washington blew the first bugle blast of freedom on 
Boston heights, and unsheathed beneath the old American 
Elm the sword that was to win his country's freedom, — 
it was in Annapolis he returned it to its scabbard with- 
out one dishonoring stain upon it, when that country's 
freedom was achieved. Oh, then, do you not see that he 
who would address you on an occasion like the present 
must sink his own personal insignificance in the glory 
and grandeur that everywhere surround him. 'The past 
is secure. ' It can never perish — It is written on the page 
of history. 

"^When that page is closed and men cease to read it 
with delight, then, indeed, will national exaltation be a 
dream and freedom live but in name." 

When the College first opened its doors the stage-coach 
and sail-packet were the only public means of travel 
known, and the horse the only '^'limited express." To- 
day not only can three thousand miles of ocean be crossed 
in six days by steamship, but the sub-marine telegraph 
has well nigh encircled th6 globe, and London, New York 
and China converse by means of a wire and code of signs, 
with the speed of electricity. And persons may converse 
together in articulate speech by means of a wire uniting 
places one hundred miles distant. The cost of develop- 
ing steamship power by the combustion of coal has de- 
creased within the last forty years more than one-half, 
while the speed of the ship has been nearly doubled. A 
consumption of fully four pounds of coal per horse power 
per hour has been decreased to a consumption now of 
within two pounds per horse power per hour, and the 



60 



speed has been increased from about twelve geographical 
miles per hour then, to twenty geographical miles per 
hour now, with this latter reduced consumption of coal. 
These achievements are significant far in excess of the 
mere numerical values mentioned. The transmitting and 
receiving instruments of the electric telegraph remained 
in all essentials the same as those used by Professor Morse 
when Miss Ellsworth dictated the words — ^^What hath 
God wrought!" sent over the first telegraph line con- 
structed in 1844, from Washington to Baltimore, until 
it occurred to Philip Keis and others that a transmitting 
instrument sufficiently sensitive might be operated by the 
air set in motion by vocal and other sounds, instead of 
by the hand, and by thus effecting the alternate opening 
and closing of the ^^electric circuit" to transmit to a 
receiving instrument sufficiently sensitive, vibrations 
(similar to those imparted to the transmitting instru- 
ment) the air waves produced by which, acting upon the 
ear, would there resolve themselves into the same sounds 
as those transmitted. Keis and others succeeded in so 
transmitting vocal and some other sounds, but not human 
speech. It remained for Professor A. Graham Bell, en- 
couraged, in pursuing his investigations, by Professor 
Joseph Henry (to whom the world is indebted for the in- 
vention of the electro-magnetic telegraph) to declare, in 
about the year 1876, the law, and show the error which 
had confronted Keis and others. Bell demonstrated 
graphically and by written description, that articulate 
speech could only be transmitted over a ^ ^closed circuit;" 
not by making and breaking the electric circuit, as is 
done in telegraphing sounds or signs, and which was the 



61 



theory upon which Keis and others sought the accomplish- 
ment of transmitting articulate speech, and failed. The 
mystery solved hy Bell's discovery^ scientific and other 
mechanics soon improved Bell's primitive instruments, a 
notable improvement being the carbon-transmitter, the 
invention of Mr. Thomas A. Edison, the electrician of 
world-wide fame. Passing by any mention, except by 
name, of the locomotive, which supplanted the stage- 
coach, and of the phonograph, graphophone, electric 
motors and dynamos, the latter being now the rival of the 
gas-light plant, we are confronted with the questions: 
What next — and what is to be the outcome of these marvels 
in science and art developed into practical inventions? 
The university, the college, and the workshop have 
wrought these changes, in the past century, and a con- 
dition of humanity consequent thereupon, — to some 
thinkers a disastrous condition. From its Greek text 
Professor Corson in his comprehensive and masterly 
address, heretofore mentioned, quotes a beautiful trans- 
lation in the following sentence : 

^^Unfortunately for the intuition of this age, its ma- 
terialism and its positivism have induced ^a condition of 
humanity which has thrown itself wholly on its intellect 
and its genius in physics, and has done marvels in ma- 
terial science and invention, but at the expense of the 
interior divinity. ' " 

But the Professor does not at all despair of the preser- 
vation of the interior divinity. Indeed he supplies in his 
own words an antidote to the danger of any such destruc- 
tion, beautifully expressed in the following language: 



62 



'^There is a time better than any other, in a human 
life, for the exercise of intuitive instinct, sensibility, 
emotion, imagination, and a time for the exercise of the 
analytic and discursive faculties — a time to feel the True, 
the Beautiful and the Grood, and a time to regard all these 
under intellectual relations. 

'^^Now, it is in mistaking times and seasons, in running 
counter to the processes of Nature's growth, that a teacher 
of the young may do a great wrong, while honestly and 
conscientiously endeavoring to do a great good. If, as is 
too often the case, he force upon young minds instruction 
in the form of abstract principles, and thus violently tear 
open the closed bud of reason, not yet ready to be un- 
folded, instead of bringing to bear upon this tender bud 
the genial warmth of sensibility, sympathy, and enthu- 
siasm, and thus allowing it to open in its own good season, 
he does a wrong which can never, in this world, be righted, 
he inflicts a wound which no time will heal.'' 

Sensibility, sympathy, and enthusiasm, continues Pro- 
fessor Corson, ^'are the elements of the soil and the atmo- 
sphere in which the intellectual, the moral, and the re- 
ligious nature of a child can alone germinate and grow, 
and in later years bloom and shed a wholesome fragrance ;" 
and he contends, that these elements are to be developed 
and brought most effectually into play '^^only through 
concrete representations of the True, the Beautiful and 
the Good; — not through an abstract enunciation of prin- 
ciples, not through a code of rules and a system of teach- 
ing." 

But is there not left safety for the interior divinity 
while yet the art preservative of arts shall preserve these 



63 



words for adult ears, addressed to the vulcanic deity of 
the village smithy? — 

'"Thanks, thanks to thee, my worthy friend, 
For the lesson thou hast taught ; 
Thus at the flaming forge of life 
Our fortunes must be wrought ; 
Thus on its sounding anvil shaped 
Each burning deed and thought." 

And yet while university, school and workshop shall 
graduate an Alexander L. Holley, who, prepared for the 
classical course at Yale, was then, to use a mechanical 
term, more English than American, ^'^ shunted" there- 
from to the scientific course at Brown University, whence 
he stepped for a year upon the foothoards of the locomo- 
tive. The ^"'thoughtful locomotive driver" Holley thus 
describes: — '^He is clothed upon, not with, the mere ma- 
chinery of a larger organism, but with all the attributes 
except volition of a power superior to his own. Every 
faculty is stimulated and every sense exalted. An unusual 
sound amid tjie roaring exhaust and the clattering wheels 
tells him instantly the place and degree of danger, as 
would a pain in his own flesh, * * * a peculiar smell of 
burning * * *, a cutting valve, a slipped eccentric, a hot 
journal, high water, low water, or failing steam; these 
sensations, as it were, of his outer body, become so inter- 
mingled with the sensations of his inner body, that this 
wheeled and fire-feeding man feels rather than perceives 
the varying stresses upon his mighty organism." 

Or while the late Prof. E. L. Youmans can be read to 
say:— 



64 



'' The star-suns of the remoter galaxies dart their ra- 
diations across the universe; and although the distances 
are so profound that hundreds of centuries have been re- 
quired to traverse them, the impulses of force enter the 
eye and impressing an atomic change upon the nerve, give 
origin to the sense of sight. Star and nerve-tissue are 
parts of the same system — stellar and nervous forces are 
correlated. Nay, sensation awakens thought and kindles 
emotion, so that this wondrous dynamic chain binds into 
living unity the realms of matter and mind through mea- 
sureless amplitudes of space and time. And if these high 
realities are but faint and fitful glimpses which science 
has obtained in the dim dawn of discovery, what must be 
the glories of the coming day ? " 

Or yet the genius of Bulwer be heard to exclaim: — 

^^ All the genius of the past is in the atmosphere we 
breathe at present. But who shall resolve to each indi- 
vidual star its own rays of the heat and the light whose 
effects are felt by all, whose nature is defined by none. 
This much at least we know ; that in heat the tendency 
to equilibrium is constant; that in light the rays cross 
each other in all directions yet never interfere the one with 
the other. * * * I say not with Descartes ^ I think, there- 
fore I am' — ^rather ' I am, therefore I think ; I think, there- 
fore I shall be. ' " 

Nor while the sailor (few^ seafaring men but have poetic 
temperaments more or less developed by their environ- 
ment) — the officer in command of an American man-of- 
war,* could thus indite his heart's lay from the Indian 
Ocean to his antipodal home: — 

* Capt. Townshend commanding U. S. S. Wactiusett. He did not live to reach home 
but died on this cruise. 



65 



"My own dear wife, dear boy, dear girls, ' 

The wealth of love ye bear to me 
Is richer than the fairest pearls 

That glisten 'neath this Indian sea ; 
For gathered 'round our simple hearth, 

Breathing that atmosphere of love, 
I'd ask no purer heaven on earth, 

'Nov dream a hapxDier heaven above. 

Yet far away my treasure lies 

While storm-swept oceans roll between, 
The pole-star reigning o'er those skies 

Xe'er gazes on this alien scene; 
But as I pace the, midnight deck. 

The Southern Cross is blazing high ; 
Ah ! heart estranged, I little reck 

The splendors of this austral sky. 
******* 

Vice-gerent of the God of light, 

I cannot wonder that of old 
The Magi worshipped, as the night 

Fled vanquished by thine orb of gold ; 
Our purer faith, our hopes God-given, 

Feel thy benignant influence still, 
Eaising each earth-bound soul toward heaven, 

Scattering each brooding fear of ill." 

And though the late Professor John W. Draper attri- 
butes European civilization to the superiority of the ana- 
lytic quality of mind, as distinguished from the synthetic 
of the Oriental, telling us that: ^' to the work of him who 
pulls to pieces there is no end, but he who puts things to- 
gether comes to an end of his task "; yet in contrasting 
the Pantheistic with the Anthropomorphic belief, he also 
says: — ^'^the pantheistic is a grand but cold philosophical 



66 



idea; the anthropomorphic embodies our recollections, and 
restores to us our dead. The one is the dream of the in- 
tellect, the other is the hope of the heart." 

Prohibited by its charter from inculcating any form of 
religious worship, St. John's has ever sought by its every 
teaching and association, not only to conserve the interior 
divinity but to teach each student as a man '' to carry his 
own sovereignty under his hat," in the possession of the 
principles of virtue and patriotism. Within her walls 
in my class-time, we were all made familiar with the elo- 
quence, and appeals for governmental justice, of Chatham, 
Burke and Grattan; with the force, beauty and patriotic 
lire of the words of James Otis, Patrick Henry, William 
Wirt, Andrew Jackson, Henry Clay and Daniel Webster; 
and with the noble diction of the solemn warnings of the 
Father of his Country, who in yonder tall edifice laid his 
soldier trappings down. Kecalling the recent outpouring 
of the people to swell the grand pageant in New York 
City, commemorative of the Centenary of Washington's 
Inauguration on the 30th of April, 1789, we are forcibly 
reminded of the former event here, when on the 23rd of 
December, 1783, he returned his Military Commission 
into the hands of his countrymen. In the words of an 
English poetess: — 

" He saved his land, but did not lay his soldier trappings down, 
To change them for a regal vest, and don a kingly crown, 
Eamewastoo earnest in her joy — too proud of such a son — 
To let a robe and title mask her noble Washington." 

And now at the close of the Centenary of St. John's 
what of its future ? It is not the part of wisdom to look 



LofC. 



67 



mournfully into the mistakes of the past committed not 
by, but against the College. The munificence of an Anne 
Arundel boy, grown to a merchant prince in the commer- 
cial metropolis of the State, sent forth in that metropolis 
scarce more than a decade since, the Johns Hopkins Uni- 
versity, like Pallas from the brain of Jove, full armed for 
its work. John McDonogh and George Peabody, the one 
a native, and the other an adopted citizen of the State for 
many years, have enriched the educational forces of the 
people by monumental endowments. May not the citizens 
of Maryland, through their representatives in the Gen- 
eral Assembly, in conjunction with the Visitors and Gov- 
ernors, now wisely seek to devise plans for making St. 
John's absolutely free to the sons of all residents of the 
State, board and lodging of the students — non-residents 
of the city — being supplied at cost. If then there re- 
mained room for more students than the State supplied, 
it might well be considered, whether it would not be good 
policy to invite free, students from without the State. 
The invitation, in view of St. John's location, might well 
bear the words — '' Siquaeris peninsulam amoenam circum- 
spice' — the motto of the beautiful State on the borders 
of Lake Superior, which so lavishly endows its great free 
University. St. John's would thus ever continue on in 
fulfilment of Maryland's motto, crescite et multiplicamini, 
and if not the great University of the State, it would be 
to it or to other Universities what the St. John's of Ox- 
ford and the St. John's of Cambridge are to those great 
Universities. Its roll of students must then of necessity 
increase, though, within limits, the cost of few or many 
scholars would be the same, and the advantages if too few 



68 



rather than too many scholars^ would be all in favor of the 
student's more thorough instruction. The Oxford cal- 
endar for 1888, as appears by Whitaker's Almanac for 
1889j shows but 122 under-graduates credited to St. 
John's College^ and the average of the twenty-one col- 
leges (excluding the Halls), is 125, the annual income 
of St. John's being 12,743 pounds sterling, which is 
near the average income of each of the other colleges. 
By the same authority, St. John's at Cambridge is 
credited on the Cambridge Calender for 1888 with 290 
under-graduates, the average of the seventeen colleges 
of the University showing 162, and St. John's gross in- 
come being 42,174 pounds. 

The College of the City of New York, formerly the 
New York Free Academy, educates absolutely free and 
without cost for tuition, books, or use of apparatus, more 
than a thousand boys and youths, within the city-walls of 
a single building. The orderly management, the minute- 
ness of detail, the thoroughness of equipment in every 
Department, from the classical to the workshop, reflect 
not alone credit upon the President's fatherly and dis- 
ciplinary care, but upon the faculty, the State and City 
for furnishing such a boon to many fathers and mothers, 
as well as to their sons. The good and useful citizens 
which this institution makes, return, in the production 
of values, hundreds of times over, all that it costs in tax- 
ation for their instruction. It may be that those immedi- 
ately charged with the responsibility of the supervision 
of St. John's, legislative and visitorial, might derive some 
light on State and municipal management of educational 
institutions by a study of the financial and other manage- 
ment of this Colle2:e. 



69 



The record of St. John's has now been recalled from 
its beginning. May its record continue on forever. And 
may its alumni never cease to claim as of old and as of 
right J entrance into that communion of scholars which 
cherishes the best thoughts of all time; 

Seek you fellowship in temples 
Where fair learning holds the key, 
Are you challenged at their portals 
Ere you enter with the free ? 
Wave proudly but this legend — 
A passport it shall be, — 
*'My alma mater is St. John's, 
'IS'eath the old historic tree." 

In the preparation of this paper, besides the authorities 
and sources of information named, I have consulted the 
'^Annals of Annapolis," published in 1841, and Eiley's 
History of Annapolis, published in 1887, but, except the 
Maryland statutes and Keports, I have been unable, for 
want of time, to consult all the numerous old authorities 
cited in said publications, and in the Kev. Ethan Allen's 
Notes, bearing upon Maryland History. I am greatly 
indebted to Mr. J. Shaaff Stockett, M. A., an alumnus 
of the class of '44, the Official Keporter of the decisions 
of the Court of Appeals, for a collection of papers con- 
taining data of great assistance to me. To Principal 
Fell; the Hon. Nicholas Brewer, Treasurer of the Board 
of Visitors and Grovernors; Daniel E. Kandall, Esq., of 
Annapolis; and Mr. Herbert Noble, of the graduating 
class, I am much indebted for data and courtesies ex- 
tended. I must also acknowledge obligations to other 



10 



friends for suggestions; and to Gen. Alexander S. Webb, 
President of the College of the City of New York, for data 
furnished concerning that institution, and for courtesies 
extended in furtherance of my efforts to obtain light on 
my subject. 

Pardon, my hearers, this attempt at authorship, which, 
though willing, is so inadequate to the obligations rest- 
ing upon me. Were the ability not lacking, the time 
permissible to the preparation of this paper has been too 
short to do the subject justice. Though a labor of love, 
my sketch may be redolent of the shop — even ^^ sound- 
ing in tort, " as the lawyers say, in abuse of your patience. 
If this be so, forgive the wrong, but have me enjoined 
against any repetition of a similar imposition upon your 
kind attention, for which I am deeply indebted and equally 
thankful. But if this sketch of our Alma Mater's career 
shall assist ever so little her merits to disclose, or prove 
of use to any historian worthy of so noble a theme, then 
indeed will my labor be requited. 

To the young gentlemen of the graduating class who, 
ere to-morrow's sun shall set, will be numbered in the 
Alumni Association, I would address a few sentences, 
more of encouragement than advice. A surfeit of the 
latter you may have, but it will not put old heads on 
young shoulders. On this point I am old enough to speak 
from experience: — 

You will find in Bulwer's ^^Caxtoniana" a mine of great 
practical advice, expressed in language of his own rare 
beauty — in which, in one place, he says: — ^^It is a great 
thing, said Goethe, to have something in common with 
the commonalty of men:" and this in addressing dan- 



71 



dieSj (now called dudes): ^'Yon sloven^ thickshoed and 
with cravat awry, whose mind, as he hurries by the bow- 
window at White 'Sj sows each fleeting moment with 
thoughts which grow, not blossoms for bouquets, but 
corn-sheaves for garners, will before he is forty, be far 
more the fashion than you. He is commanding the time 
out of which you are fading. " 

While recalling the class motto of 1880, ^^ Nulla dies 
sine linea," do not forget that the famous painter also 
said, '^ ne sutor idtra crepidam." The reason of this re- 
proof and that of the maxim ^ ' ne quid nimis ' ' may each be 
considered as but implications of that formula said to be 
of such '^high generality " — the law of von Baer — '^ The 
heterogeneous is evolved from the homogeneous by a 
gradual process of change. ' ' Specialize your labor there- 
fore, if dependent upon it for support. Concentrate your 
energies, let your culture be never so deep or broad. 
Choose your life-work, if possible, in that vocation to 
which you are instinctively led by a taste for it. The 
rewards of success are far more likely to come under such 
circumstances, amid the changes and chances of this life. 
Then you may observe the maxim age quod agis, and wisely 
improving the present, each of you may ^^go forth to 
meet the shadowy future without fear and with a manly 
heart." But remember that, as the poet implored the 
maiden, — 

"Pausing with reluctant feet, 
Where the brook and river meet," 

to bear on her lips the smile of truth, in her heart the 
dew. of youth, — so your Alma Mater invokes yoa to a 



h. 



n 



similar course in life. You may not attain to the per- 
fection of ideal femininity ; for, the fibres in man's struc- 
tural organization are of grosser grain combined into 
coarser and less complex muscular and nervous tissues 
than those of woman. Nature has wrought this differ- 
ence, for woman's protection, relying, as has been'said, 
on man's magnanimity not to prove recreant to his trust. 
I can yet fully sympathize with you if you are now 
ready to retort, as against all advisers, in the words in 
one of Bulwer's minor dramas: — 

"Oh, how little these middle-aged formalist schemers 
Know of us the bold youngsters, half sages, half dreamers. 
Sages half, yes, because of the time passing on 
Part and parcel are we, they belong to time gone. 
Dreamers half, yes, because,' in a woman s fair face 
We imagine the heaven they seek in a place." 

But read and remember what follows: — 

"The world's most royal heritage is his — 
Who most enjoys, most loves, and most forgives." 






ADDRKSS 



ON THE 



One Hundredth Anniversary 

OF 

ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE, 

ANNAPOLIS, 
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 26TH, iS3u. 



BY 



PHILIP RANDALL VOORHEES, M. A. 



baltimore: 

Printed by William K. Boyle & Son. 

no E. Baltimore Street. 



LB^! 



